As the dust settles on the Wine Spectator Top 100 Wines of 2009 announced November 20 last year the Australian finalists need some recognition.

Ten brands made the cut (no Penfolds Grange) but four wines from the Barossa Valley. And you think that means the tasters are biased towards big, buxom wines.

That does not appear to be the case. Four wines are entry level shiraz and another two, viognier and viognier-pinot gris are entry level whites.

Nineteen Italian wines made the list; the greatest representation of any exporting country whilst Bordeaux managed four wines at Number 40, 64,84 and 96.

The top wine last year was a Washington State Cabernet from Colombia Crest, a 2005 (USD 27).

Number 14 and the first Australian is Two Hands Bella’s Garden Shiraz 2007 (94); USD 60 one of their many super-premium shiraz from the Barossa Valley.

Number 24 is Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2005 995); USD 65, a South Australian blend.

Number 39 is Yalumba Eden Valley Viognier 2008 (92); USD 19, a lovely textured white made by the virtual inventors of this style in Australia.

Number 43 is Schild Shiraz 2007 (92); USD 20, an entry level wine from the Barossa Valley.

Number 51 is Shoofly Shiraz 2007 (91); USD 14, is primarily an export wine made by Ben Riggs using Barossa, Clare and McLaren Vale shiraz.

Number 54 is Peter Lehmann Shiraz 2006 (91); USD 16, the standard and very well made Barossa offering of this stalwart winery.

Number 59 is Thorne-Clark Shotfire Shiraz 2006 (92); USD 33, is the company’s standard Barossa shiraz named after descendent James Goddard.

Number 68 is Heartland Viognier Pinot Gris 2007 (91); USD 16, Ben Glaetzer-made, 68%/32%, Langhorne Creek (80%), Limestone Coast (20%).

Number 73 is Jacob’s Creek Reserve Riesling 2008 (90); USD 13, a terrific Eden/Clare Valley blend with great aromatic character.

Number 82 is d’Arenberg The Stump Jump Grenache, Shiraz Mourvedre 2008 (90); USD 11, from old oak, a wonderful mouthful of spice and supple tannins

More info: http://www.winespectator.com/contentimage/wso/pdf/Top100list2009.pdf

Much has been written about the Asian palate and its new-found love of embracing high value wine brands.

And often come reports of pairing such high brow drops with soft drinks.

So I was much relieved to recently read Asian Palate, Korean-born Hong Kong-based Jeannie Cho Lee MW’s scoop of the best wine pairings with Cantonese, Shanghainese, Northern Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, Central Thai, Peranakan, Singaporean, West Indian, Punjabi and South Indian cuisines.

This style of book writing has been a glaring omission from any East Asian sommeliers’ bookshelf and has now systematically detailed how wine styles dovetail into the enjoyment of a wide range of cultural flavours.

Future food lecturing in Asian restaurants about how to select, pair and harmonise our table wines is going to be somewhat easier.

Jeannie unlocks the first aspect of gridlock that Caucasians encounter among the Chinese culture – that of a profound liking for red wine. In fact she underlines the translation of “wine” to mean “putaojiu” or grape alcohol which we would see as brandy or cognac etc, spirit at 40 percent alcohol. Funnily enough Chinese usage does not capture this as grape origin wine either!

A better translation is “honhjiu” or “red alcohol” which explains even more the preference to drink red wine even before the health experts proclaimed the cardiovascular protection from the red grape or its wine.

This author establishes the Asian food building blocks of taste as the five s’s: sweet, sour, salty (the basic tastes) plus spicy and smoky, also suggesting that these are the fundamental s’s challenging each Asian at meal time.

She then goes on to address the four fundamentals of everybody’s taste; sweet, sour, salty, bitter then added that elusive but texture-grabbing sensation of umami (in food technical terms an amino acid -glutamic acid, the ingredient in stocks.) This makes many of us salivate when very hungry as we commence to eat.

As Asian cultures are more likely grab some green tea or a beer as a more familiar digestive or palate soother, some easily recalled suggestions about wine groups to drink from is applaudable, and is provided very clearly in this book.

For each origin cuisine there is a detailed taste Checklist: zero to five in intensity for salt, sweet, bitter, sour, spice, umami and flavour intensity.

Next in the Checklist is the wine taste scale; zero to five in intensity for sweet (sugar), sour (acidity), tannin (drying sensation), body (texture), flavour intensity, and finish (impression).

Jeannie is inviting hosts, chefs, sommeliers or whoever to make two easy but fundamental decisions about how and what wine they serve.

First analyse your food tastes from Asian Palate table, page 26 for Cantonese flavours, all dishes you serve.

Second use some palate dissection of suitable wines, again using Asian Plate table page 26, and “voila” make some decisions about a pairing.

If unsure, I’d suggest choosing two wines, a little diverse from each other, say one red, one white to learn from the process.

For more information www.asianpalate.com ; Asian Palate USD 98 from Asset Publishing HK.

Yesterday Hilton Brisbane general manager Martin Kendall announced the programme for the 2010 Hilton Brisbane Masterclass weekend held July 24-25. www.qldmasterclass.com

This is one of Australia’s longest running chef and winemaker featured events (since 1995) centred in one hotel where participants eat and drink exactly what the presenters demonstrate.

The hands-on weekend has previously invited many stars – Gordon Ramsey, Charlie Trotter, Michel Roux, Michel Richard, Antonio Carluccio and at the last event, Newcastle-born Brett Graham who has added his third UK Michelin star since visiting Brisbane.

Stars for 2010 amongst 41 presenters are Californian baker Peter Reinhart, Swiss Lindt Master Chocolatier Thomas Schnetzler, Susur Lee from Toronto, and for the first time ever a sliver of Hilton greatness with chefs from Beijing Wangfujing (Yu Xiang Gu), Kuala Lumpur (Latchumanan Supramanian), Auckland (Cristiano de Martin), Cairns (Jimmy Shu) and Sydney (mixologist Grant Collins).

Despite many past Masterclasses the Hilton chefs have supported the back of house plating the thousands of recipe morsels concurrently demonstrated by the glamour chefs. This is the first time ever to see some Pacific Rim Hilton stars on parade at a weekend a little Asian focussed.

So come to Brisbane for this, but book early if you wish to climb the lift to stay in the hotel, rooms sell quickly. brisbane@hilton.com

The headline wine event will be Brokenwood’s vertical of Graveyard Shiraz (AUD 100) celebrating 40 years of production in the Hunter Valley.

I will focus on more chefs and winemakers in further blogs. meanwhile I must finish reading Jeannie Cho Lee MW’s definitive and award winning wine and Asian food matching tome Asian Palate to be prepared for the Weekend. www.asianpalate.com

Queensland’s Burnett Valley Vineyards, the holding company for Clovely Estate Wines gave a spotless display of its drinks last Saturday at its Red Hill City Cellar door.

Billed as a Winemaker’s dinner because company CEO and Chief Winemaker Luke Fitzpatrick was a big contributor to the wine discourse, the event ran as a degustation-six courses.

Paired with the Clovely brands were similar or contrasting wines from the nearby vineyard of Barambah Wines on Goschnick’s Road, Moffatdale.

Starter wines were Clovely Estate Left Field Semillon 2006 (AUD 20) and Barambah First Grid Unwooded Chardonnay 2008 (AUD 19); showing an unwooded semillon with some bottle maturity although it didn’t show it, and a funky-style chardonnay with creamy texture and palate attitude.

Verdelho is the patron wine of the South Burnett, now a very successful general drink; Clovely White Label 2009 (AUD 13) and Barambah First Grid 2007 (AUD 19) were paired with a micro-ocean trout salad doused very gently with buffalo mascarpone (Vannella in Cairns); using the unwooded nature of verdelho to maximum effect with its steely bright acidity.

A pair of hefty white chardonnays were put up to complement a sliver of roasted duck breast in a tart. The Clovely Reserve 2007 (AUD 28) and Barambah First Grid 2008 (AUD 27) were poured; terribly contrasting as the Clovely was fruit-preserved and punchy, no oak showing, pale colour and mouth-filling. Barambah was more forward, funky-nosed from indigenous yeast, giving tastes of secondary flavours and substantial oak dryness to integrate.

Both wine producers are very committed towards making top chardonnay; a variety they believe is the primary white grape in this world, capable of enormous complexity, style and above all drinking interest for those who open or share a bottle. South Burnett has a natural fine underlining acidity and line to which both brand hold much respect; they preserve this fineness in their chardonnays.

The melting moment with this course was the fungal aromas from the Blue Opal soft ripened cheese permeating the butternut pumpkin in its wafer-soft tart.

Shiraz was served with a tiny ball of shaved/ minced/ ground wagyu fillet (cleverly reformed), pink with mushroom worked though the fat flavours. These were Clovely Reserve 2007 (AUD 28) and Barambah First Grid 2007 (AUD 32).

Being from the same area both shiraz had the same underlying fruit aromas; plum, licorice and red fruits; while maturing the Clovely in American barrels had softened off the wine with total integration, while newer French Allier in the Barambah produced a more tannic wine with quite complex nose/oak overtones. Both wines seven to 10 years to go.

A double lamb cutlet under Mediterranean-influenced ratatouille (Clovely also have a 37,000-tree olive grove) came with a pair of cabernets. Clovely Reserve 2007 (AUD 28) and Barambah First Grid 2005 (AUD 29) both showed fuller bodied cabernet characteristics from the warm climate environment of the South Burnett coupled with good leafy and herbal aromatics, both modest in drying tannin levels pointing to shelf lives around three to five years.

The finale came with two dessert wines; Clovely Estate Left Field Botrytis Semillon 2009 (AUD 20 for 375 ml) and Barambah Rack Dried Semillon 2009 (AUD 24 for 375 ml) with vanilla bean ice-cream contained in a petit apricot frangipane tart.

Clovely’s wine is conventional botrytis infection, stainless steel aging and early bottling giving the unctuous style. Barambah’s wine is dried on racks to semi-wither, then re-combined with dry semillon to ferment a second time (Italian passito method) followed by aging in barrique for eight months to make a dry/savoury/textured style of sticky.

Clovely Wellington-born chef at Red Hill Jason Winter excelled with his portion management, flavour matching and food polish. Visit www.clovely.com.au