Today’s Penfolds re-corking clinic held in Brisbane’s Conrad Treasury Hotel had a fitting ring to it, for the recent re-naming of Fosters Wine Estates to Treasury Wine Estates had some additional significance from the choice of venue.

Every four years Penfolds invite collectors of Grange Shiraz and any other Penfolds wine 15 or more years-old to be submitted for re-corking.

The absolute star of this Brisbane clinic was the 1903 half pint bottle of Auldana Cellars St Henri Claret (mainly shiraz) presented by a local collector.

Penfolds Chief Winemaker Peter Gago says, “We did not open this wine for in fact it is cleverly sealed with an internal brass ring which means that opening the bottle results in us being unable to re-cork it. It would just have to be drunk on the spot!”

Gago personally has half bottles (thirteen ounces or 369 mls) of similar styles made in 1917 and 1935 under the Auldana label commenced in 1887 by a famous South Australian gent, Edmund Mazure.

Penfolds purchased Auldana Cellars, a property with vines and winery adjacent to the current Magill Vineyard in 1943, and all St Henri Clarets were released in branded Penfolds dark brown bottles from then.

Collectors made appointments to present with their old reds: these were inspected, metal capsules paired off, double long stranded corkscrews inserted sequentially into the cork (often crumbly, some sodden from slow leakage or simply broken up) which extracts many a poor cork in one piece.

On extraction a small pour was made for my Penfolds red winemaker, Steve Lienert, wine gas (mix of nitrogen-70% and carbon dioxide-30%) is jetted into the headspace to flush out air, a temporary cork placed in the bottle while discussion on the state of maturation between winemaker and owner proceeds to develop a mutual understanding of the drink date, current condition and likely reliability in re-corking the wine for subsequent cellaring.

The first bottle up was Penfolds Shiraz Mataro Bin 2 1970, having a large ullage in a burgundy bottle, cork leaking and generally looking in a terrible condition.

The grape origin was Barossa and Magill for shiraz and Magill for the mataro (also known as mourvedre): this wine was very aged with huge mature molasses and tar flavours, but sweet fruits and good ripe tannin softness, and a touch of oxidation creeping in. This was topped with the current vintage St Henri 06 to freshen and re-fill the bottle.

Wines were re-gassed then corked using heavily QC’d natural, reportedly high class cork and finished off with the current gleaming red tin metal capsules. Penfolds winemakers assisting included Andrew Baldwin (red winemaker), Kym Schroeter (senior white winemaker) and Adam Clay.

The next pair inspected were St Henri 1974, a very poor year for South Australian wineries (floods, wet and misty weather during the harvest) where only two main wines stood up to the test of time, this St Henri and Yalumba’s FDR1A Cabernet Shiraz.

One bottle of St Henri was in brilliant condition; nose of rich bonox, real attitude and power, importantly smelling fresh, then good syrupy texture and mature shiraz character reflected by the tastes of tar, earth, baked plum and beef essence. The second bottle had aged faster than its predecessor, no doubt this being accelerated by air through its cork, and was simply a shade of a wine.

The remaining bottle was Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz 1975; mature but quite fresh on nose, palate also bright, tannins strong and good leafy cabernet characters abound. But drink it over the next few years.

Steve Lienert placed a rear label on each wine; signed off on it for drinking status and suitability to progress as a fine mature example of Penfolds wine. Any wines no longer drinkable, oxidised, cork tainted or seen as unsuitable examples of the company’s wines were not endorsed, receiving a white dot sticker and no signed back label.

One moral to this story: there are not just great wines and great vintages of them but simply great bottles to drink. And some bottles fail through cork collapse, or if you are lucky through this being arrested at the clinic.

Penfolds move to North America next month to conduct similar clinics in Dallas, New York and Toronto.

Last month’s Hilton Brisbane Masterclass Weekend included a Hilton room with chefs from Auckland, Cairns, Beijing Wangfujing (there are three Hiltons in Beijing), Sydney and Kuala Lumpur Hilton hotels.

A very commanding man, tall in stature and demure in voice was the Indian chef Latchuman Supramaniam who demonstrated curry preparations to Masterclass attendees.

Alongside Latchuman was the Purple Palate’s Darren Davis, essentially a Barossa Valley devotee making wine pairings for Southern Indian curry influences-machili samosa (salmon puree masala filling), idli (steamed domes of rice/lentil dumplings) with koli kulambu (chicken gravy/curry) and meen moilee (fragrant barramundi in set coconut cream curry).

Darren emphasised that curry dishes containing sweetness, high spice, high bitterness and high astringency will do the following: dumb down light fruit flavours, make wines high in astringency, high alcohol and high oak hard to swallow due to the food component-wine component duel of tastes. Put simply pairing wines with curry takes some analysis and a bit of skill which Darren showed really well.

With salmon samosas Darren paired Greystone (NZ) Gewurztraminer 2009 from Waipara (90), great perfume but even better a spicy palate to carry the curry herbs, at 18.7 g/l residual sugar, though in this match it tasted dry.

With chicken curry (Koli Kulambu) Darren matched Smallfry Barossa Riesling 2010 (89), nice limey nose and a great belt of acidity which is absolutely fundamental with curry, as acidity keeps your mouth fresh when the wine and chicken curry mix up, better with 17 g/l residual sugar.

With the Kerala-style fish curry, Darren chose two more forceful wines, Massena Surly Muse Viognier 2009 (88) from the Barossa, a great slippery palate, low oak, yet poised and punchy, able to withstand the ginger, chillis and mustard in the curry.

The second complement was Cirillo 1850′s Grenache Rose 2009 (90), a lovely petal-pink Barossa drink, cherry-fruited, with yummy fruit sweetness, off dry wine, which carried the curry flavours right through to the last swallow.

I caught up with Latchuman afterwards to hear more about his cultural passion and a little more about Indian curry culture.

How long have you been a chef? 20 years

And was it your first profession? Yes

Have you always cooked regional Indian? Yes have always cooked Indian food but I also specialise in Malaysian cuisine

List two or three of your favourite curry spices and why do they do something for you? Cumin, coriander, chillis, fenugreek, these spices compliment my cooking style

What is your birth region and the curry styles from that area? My father is from southern India but I was born in Malaysia, my curry styles range from northern to southern India

In contemporary Indian cuisine are curries the ultimate experience or do you consider suites of other dishes to be important? Curries are important to Indian cuisine and we are always looking to expand to other cooking styles and methods, it’s important to do that

Do you have your own personal “fusion” recipes? I’m currently working on that at the moment but I try to stay authentic to my Indian food

At Hilton Kuala Lumpur what do you supervise ? I am in charge of the Indian restaurant at the hotel

Prior to 2004 were you a chef in 5 star properties or standalone restaurants? I previously worked at Sunway Resort Hotel and Spa in Malaysia

How have the pre-2004 experience influenced your cooking today? I was travelling through France for Malaysian food promotions and found it very inspiring

When you demonstrated at Brisbane Hilton Masterclass what do you think the audience took home most strongly? Guests learnt about Indian recipes and methods of cooking. In Western and Chinese cuisine you learn about making the sauces and separating them from the main dish, in Indian its more about the braising of the meat

In your homeland, hot dishes (high chilli heat) are well accepted; in Brisbane generally this is not the case amongst Australians (ethnicity taken out); how would you modify your cooking for a difference audience but still remain authentic? In my sessions I follow the original recipe, if the dish is too spicy you can add cream or tomato paste to balance the dish and you can then tone down the spices

For more info see the following websites: www.purplepalate.com.au ; www.kl-studio.com ; www.qldmasterclass.com

The release of the James Halliday Australian Wine Companion 2011 Edition last week caused a lot of interest. Because lots of wineries were receiving five stars meaning they are the top of their achievement tree.

Or in the eyes of venerable Australian reviewer James Halliday this is the word, although there were a few tasting notes supplied by Ben Edwards who has been assisting James over the past few years.

Halliday has posted full tasting notes for 3888 wines (from 8116 tasted), ratings and drink dates for a further 2613 wines from 1487 wineries rated (there are over 2000 wineries from which to choose!)

The 2010 Gambero Rosso: gambero meaning prawn, and rosso red, yet curiously the publishers are having a lend of readers this year by releasing it in pink paperback with an image of the said prawn on the front cover.

However this is one serious book (23rd edition) with an editor-in-chief, Daniele Cernilli, three senior editors, 10 special contributors, 13 main contributors and 35 other contributors.

Gambero Rosso reports on 18,000 wines (from 25,000 samples) from 2,253 producers, awarding three glasses to 391 wines, editors’ three glass plus to 31 wines, and three green glasses to 75 wines. This release is printed in English and Italian with the address of the publisher in New York.

However browsing through my 1989 Italian version (second edition), 2200 wines were reviewed from 600 producers; there were two editors, Daniele Cernilli and Carlo Petrini (of Slow Food fame).

In the introduction to the 2010 book, the Guide says “The 2010 guide is also the first published by Gambero Rosso alone. Our long-standing collaboration with Slow Food has come to an end”, and that sounds like a story for another day.

The red wine of the year is a nebbiolo from Gattinara (north of Barolo) from Antoniolo, 2005, white wine was a fiano from Campania from Colli di Lapio, 2008 while winery of the year was Piedmont’s Bruno Giacosa from Nieve (three cup Barolo and Barbarescos 05s).

The most significant awards were the green glasses which is a step in the right direction. However the 10 criteria are a little misdirected as there is obvious bias towards large producers who will necessarily use mechanical means to produce wine for everyday drinking but still capable of three glass recognition. This is green bashing gone a little too far.

From Halliday’s 2011 Edition of Wine Companion, one Queensland brand, Summit Estate entered the five star winery category, to sit alongside the ever present Boireann, now a five star winery five years running.

The Brisbane Hilton Masterclass weekend just passed welcomed a terrific young man who presented the wines of Bindi near Gisborne in Victoria.

Michael Dhillon, son of a Punjabi man who left India in 1958 to attend Ballarat Grammar School and who never returned, is cleverly at the helm of Bindi Winegrowers.

He showed recent chardonnay and pinot noir wines from his single estate planting in one of Victoria’s coolest wine regions to the north west of Melbourne. That’s the only two varieties grown on the property, and the tasting became one focussed on the terrain and soils on one small six hectare vineyard.

As with all Australian vineyards, Bindi has been singled out for an advancement of the harvest, once reliably occurring in April and May, but now much earlier.

European vineyards use the rule of thumb that it takes 100 days from when a vine flowers to when it’s harvested. The standard time at Bindi was 115-120 days but now with global warming the period is closer to 110.

Bindi have water supplied but only water for vine health, and so in a dry season like 2007, water was applied five times. This also means the vines run on light crops; 4-5 tonnes per hectare is the maximum crop load, so the water demand is never that high anyway (big southern vineyards aim for crop loads of 8-12 tonnes per hectare).

Bindi make a vineyard blend wine called Composition, 2009 (93) and 2007 (89) which taste essentially like unwooded chardonnay; restrained nose, a little lemon meringue notes, then very lean, savoury and dominant in steely acid, and most enjoyable. Michael states these grapes have some indigenous yeast, some cultured in ferment, little or no malic acid conversion, aging in old barrels for 11 months, then bottled.

At the top end of the chardonnay planting there is an outcrop of quartz, and wines grown on that section have a different personality. Enter Bindi Quartz 2009 (95) and 2008 (94); still the same restrained nose but a more succulent palate, a touch more persistent but more tension, vibrance and textural feel in the prominant acidity. This is hallmark Bindi. The vineyard is less fertile and the yields even lower.

Michael stresses that his wines need “to taste like they come from somewhere” and that they be wines to contemplate. The best introspection with his chardonnays is to try to taste the oak, as it is so cleverly installed and beautifully tied together as one flavour.

Bindi’s first Pinot Noir is again called Composition, 2009 (94) is a blend of two vineyards, Original and a new planting from 2001 (30% and 70%). It has lots of colour for pinot, smells of dark fruits and finishes off very soft and supple; it’s in balance yet there is lots of acidity making the wine very drinkable.

Bindi Original Vineyard Pinot Noir 2009 (95) is a paler wine yet it belies what tastes arise, softness and dryness but a great savouriness on swallowing. Other than a whiff of perfume the nose is also stitched together as one event.

Bindi Block 5 Pinot Noir 2009 (94) is showing advanced colour yet a complete nose, great concentration and tingling acidity. Block 5 2008 (96) is totally different, reflecting the year, leafy, closed up nose, big richness on taste, oak and savouriness in many layers, a sleeper.

These are wines to contemplate, capable of 10-15 year life spans and most understated. As such they are wines which grow on you, so drink a few bottles.

As a passing comment, Michael Dhillon had to quickly buy a heat exchanger in 2008, with the big hot, his grapes came into the winery above 20 oC, whereas usually an autumnal harvest would have readings of 10-15oC.

Find more at www.bindiwines.com.au.