Tuesday, 31 May 2011
While there will be readers who’d ascribe the southern odyssey to the fact that we’d become aware of the existence of Bloodwood Wines, I should point out Madam was talking about heading to Canberra in the autumn even before we’d headed off on the trip across the Nullarbor.
On the other hand, once we’d made the discovery that this five Halliday star winery was operated by people Hughesy remembers from those halcyon days in the early seventies there was no way we’d be leaving Bloodwood off the itinerary if we were passing.
That’s not to suggest, however, we were going to be doing the usual Hughesy does the wineries bit while we were there. Under ordinary circumstances once we’re in the vicinity of wineries there’s an inclination to see how many visits we can cram in, and we usually manage five or maybe six, preferably with lunch at one of them. At each stop it’s a case of wander into the tasting area, sample the range, try to have a bit of a chat with whoever’s on the premises, add the details to their mailing list if we've been impressed and head on to the next one with (maybe) a bottle or two for consumption in the immediate future.
The first factor that had me limiting the stops in Orange was the fact we were travelling from Coonabarabran, looking at three hours on the road to get there, and were heading off early the next morning to get to the markets in Canberra before lunch on Sunday. That meant we had, maybe, four or five hours in Orange on Saturday afternoon, so we weren’t going to be able to visit the same number of places you might manage in a full day’s touring and tasting.
I’d had a look at the other establishments that rated highly with Halliday, of course. All up, there are forty-five wineries listed, and five of them are five star operations. One didn’t appear to be open to the public, and one had a cellar door operation in the old Union Bank in downtown Orange, which might have been a dinner venue for Saturday night, so it was a question of whether we wanted to get to the other two, which might be do-able, but I wasn’t sure it was desirable.
After all, we were calling on people I knew, admittedly from a long time ago, so we weren’t operating in ordinary working the way around the wineries mode as outlined above. Actually, having tried most of the range, there would, under other circumstances, have even been a case for leaving Bloodwood off the list entirely to focus on new territory and different tastes.
No, I’d eventually decided, when we call in there we’re not looking at the usual routine. I was interested in finding out what had brought Steve and Rhonda to this point, which was hardly what you'd have predicted some forty years ago and while I’d probably be able to try the rest of the range if that didn’t happen it wasn’t going to be a problem. After all, there’ll be an order for (at least) a mixed dozen going in before the end of the year, so I can catch up then.
Once we’d sorted out the itinerary I’d called to ensure there’d be someone on the premises on the relevant day, and had been told to call when we were on the road with an ETA, which was duly done once were headed out of Dubbo. I got the feeling at that point we weren’t heading into standard winery territory when the call produced news that Rhonda had customers coming at twelve-thirty, but that we should just wander in when we arrived.
Customers? I thought. Well, then, what are we?
That question was answered after we pulled in to the car park and I wandered in to say Hello. There were people seated around a table inside, and I was greeted warmly and informed Steve was out in the Riesling block, and had left instructions to head in that direction once we’d arrived.
We’d sighted a figure disappearing into what we learned was the Riesling block on the way in, but by the time we’d parked the car, greeted Rhonda, done the introductions bit and received the previously mentioned instructions we found him back in the winery feeding Shiraz grapes into the de-stemmer. Brief introductions followed, and while Madam disappeared in search of subjects to point the camera at I stuck around to watch what was going on.
What followed was a couple of hours will stay with me, though it wasn’t one of those experiences that feature moments of blinding insight. It was a case of incremental connections of things I already sort of knew but hadn’t consciously put together before. Given the nature of the activities, wandering from place to place between deliveries of grapes to the de-stemmer, there’s no continuous narrative to the experience, more a disjointed sequence of episodes and renewed acquaintance.
Forty years leaves a bit of territory to be filled in, and given an aging memory and the circumstances we were operating in the subsequent narrative is rather more structured than the experiences described.
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