Having a SWELS time
In part seven of their journey to Australia, former Claridge's general manager Ron Jones and his wife Eve visit vineyards in Western Australia and get help with an IT crisis.
Perth, Western Australia. It's the end of a long, hard day's wine-tasting around Margaret River. Of the 62 wineries, we get to only a dozen but, God willing, we'll be back, guys.
The harvest here in the South-west of the continent was five weeks behind that in the Hunter Valley. After a warm dry spell, they were planning to get the Chardonnay, Sauvignon and Semillon in.
White grapes were already covered with acres of netting. Public vineyard enemy number one are silver-eyes, tiny birds that bore minuscule holes in the grapes and suck out the juice. Then there are the parakeets that peck their pick before indulging in their favourite sport - knocking the undamaged grapes off the vine. Four-legged animals, too, from rabbits to ‘roos, are eager to picnic among the ripening grapes.
In our humble opinion, many of the wines of the Margaret River region are the best in Australia - crisp, true fruit flavours that nevertheless remain subtle and are worth savouring at leisure. There are none of the in-your-face or overripe flavours often found in New World wines. Pierr'o and Cullens, Evans & Tate, Voyager and Vasse-Felix are right up there, but they're not alone.
Tasting rooms vary from de luxe, such as Voyager's, to the older and more intimate at Amberley Estate. Tastings are mainly free, and they occasionally show some of their older, rarer wines. Many have restaurants that could hold their own in any city. Winery staff are, in the main, patient with cellar-door visitors. In every coach party, every carload, there are those who know zilch and more who know it all. So we forgive the ill-tempered pourer at Cullens, and the others who ask: "What style of wine do you like? Red or white, sweet or dry?" when we're up for some serious sniff-swirl-slurp-and-spit.
But then there were the nice girls at Vasse-Felix. Eve quietly suggested that the 2000 Shiraz was out of condition (it was more than slightly corked). Our girl took it to her colleague at the other tasting table, who sniffed it, shrugged, gave her another opened bottle - then placed ours back on her own table for the next visitors to taste.
Uplifting words
The wine words on everybody's lips - or at least their tasting notes - are "lifted" and "uplifted" flavours. Most enthusiasts reckon it refers to the degree of taste or fruitiness, but we like the explanation that it means "grapes picked early to conserve acidity, giving increased or ‘lifted' crispness to the wine".
Taxation - the worldwide curse
We are not alone in slating government attitudes to wine. Michael Wright, proprietor of the Voyager Estate, reminds us that the Margaret River region was in serious decline at the end of the 1950s. Today, it's the most successful tourist region in Western Australia, thanks largely to the wine industry.
Wright feels strongly about the treatment meted out by an ungrateful government. "Australia now has the distinction of having the highest domestic tax regime on wine," he complains, comparing it to France, Italy, South Africa and the USA. He estimates that, for a $25 bottle of wine, 25% goes on tax and the wine producer's net return is a mere 2%.
We're a couple of SWELS
The latest euphemism-mnemonic here for the elderly but not yet incapacitated is SWELS - "seniors with energetic lifestyles". Guess the cap fits.
The short goodbye
Soon we will board the QE2 for two months as guest speakers, cruising slowly back to the UK. It's our favourite ship and we're looking forward to those weeks at sea, but, oh, we will miss Australia.
Aussies are the proudest, friendliest, kindest and cleanest people we've ever met.
For example, Andre Diaz, duty manager of the Hyatt Regency hotel in Perth, spent an hour helping us on a quietish Saturday evening. We had gone to the hotel's business centre to seek advice with a laptop emergency that three Internet centres had been unable to resolve. First Anthea, the Hyatt's duty receptionist, then Mr Diaz took endless trouble to help, even though we confessed we were not residents. (We were dining in the hotel with our old friend Gerty Ewen, an Athenaeum hotel guest in 1978. Dining by coincidence in the same restaurant were Dr and Mrs Wally Gould, also Athenaeum guests from the 1970s.) When Mr Diaz realised it would take time, he suggested we take a seat in the lounge and talk to our friends rather than waste our evening sitting in the business centre. Back home, I fear we'd have wasted our time even asking.
Waiters and shop assistants look you in the eye and listen when you speak. In Perth, you can walk along the banks of the Swan River and see families enjoying an evening picnic or cooking on the communal barbies. Go back early next morning and you won't find as much as a lolly-wrapper on the grass. We haven't had a disappointing or overpriced meal, nor found a single public convenience - and there seems to be one every hundred yards in the cities we visited - unfit for use.
The Australians have a lot to be proud of. Their care for the environment, their country and each other is a lesson to us all. Pity they can't be nicer to New Zealand!
Our next despatches should reach you from somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
