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Whine About Wine: The CARTeSIAN McLaren Vale Wine Show

For a wine neophyte like me, last week’s CARTeSIAN McLaren Vale Wine Show 2012 and Bushing King Lunch was a fine place to start. Who said going 0 to 60 was bad?

In its 40th year, the medieval-themed Bushing King Lunch crowned the best winemaker of the year – featuring a lavish pagan-style luncheon with enough wine, seafood, whole roasted lambs and chickens and chocolate ‘bricks’ to render the meal of dinner (and a hangover) completely irrelevant.

The annual McLaren Vale Wine Show is to this day one of the most significant regional wine shows in Australia, and it showed, with every who’s who of the South Australian wine industry taking part in the fulsome event.

 

 

Starting the day at Tintara Winery for an early morning wine tasting (how any good wine-themed outing should begin), the earthy reds, Grenache and Grenache-blends proved to be the most popular for the day amongst the journalists, photographers and television personality guests.

Thankfully, we were reminded about the spit bucket. 25 different wines later and there may not have been any reviews or photos of the day…

As for the Bushing King Lunch, held at Penny’s Hill Winery, it was a sensory overload. The beautiful natural surroundings of McLaren Vale and vineyards juxtaposed with metal sculptures and artwork was both future and fantasy in one. Naturally, the medieval touches, like duelling armoured men in chain mail, jesters, harpists, fire twirlers and pagan singing troupe seemed right at home in a place that couldn’t have felt further away yet so accessible from the city of Adelaide.

Matt Koch and fellow Rosemount winemaker Andrew Locke accepted the royal title of Bushing King and King (no queen this year, sadly) for their stellar 2011 Nursery Project Mataro, along with 18 other awards for the Rosemount Estate selection of wines entered in the 2012 show. International guest judge Dr Edward Ragg and along with a panel of judges and wine experts tasted over 700 entries in 3 days before awarding Rosemount's Mataro the Gold and Trophy for Single Best Red Variety. Have a read of the full list of winners here.

The world of wine may seem far away to me and my cheap moscato-swilling friends, but luckily we know now that McLaren Vale and all its treasures are just around the corner. Cheers!

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