Six weeks among the Aussie vines
Alessandro Marchesan loves Australia. The 27-year-old Italian sommelier at London's Kensington Place restaurant and bar has just got back from a six-week trip down under exploring the country's wine regions and restaurants. And no, he didn't just win the lottery - Marchesan won the Daniel Pontifex Award.
Daniel who? Everybody at Kensington Place remembers Daniel. So do the citizens of Adelaide in south Australia, because he used to work at legendary Adelaide wine bar Universal, owned by the equally legendary Michael Hill-Smith. But Adelaide-born Pontifex was just 21 years old when he lost his life in a road accident on London's streets after celebrating his birthday.
"God, it was awful," remembers Kensington Place's chef-proprietor Rowley Leigh, who had been so taken with Pontifex that he was about to promote him to head waiter. "His charm was as winning as his wine knowledge - we were very impressed with him," says Leigh.
Pontifex's parents, both from Adelaide, wanted to do something to remember their son, so they set up the Daniel Pontifex Award - a travel bursary aimed at anybody in the on-trade who has an interest in wine. The only criterion: they must be under 30. The award has been in place now in Adelaide for four years, but this year, for the first time, it was open to UK entrants - and Marchesan got lucky.
His prize: a month in Australia to explore some of its wine regions and restaurants, all paid for by the bursary. "It was an incredible trip," enthuses Marchesan, who is now back at Kensington Place, selling more Australian wine than ever before.
"It's good to grab a tasting glass and look, swirl and taste, but I believe that the most important thing for a sommelier is to actually see how wine is made, to see why wine tastes the way it does. Then, when you understand it, you can organise your wine list better and find foods to match more easily," he says.
Marchesan met some of the country's leading winemakers - including Brian Croser, Geoff Merrill, Tim Knapstein, Jeffrey Grosset, Stephanie O'Toole and Charlie Melton - and visited a fair few of Australia's prize wine regions, among them Clare Valley, Adelaide Hills, McLaren Vale and Coonawarra.
And he got his hands dirty in the wineries. "Yes, I was a cellar rat," he says proudly, full of tales about how he helped to pump over the wines and analyse sugar levels in the grapes.
He even did a night in the kitchen with Adelaide's most famous chef, Cheong Liew, at the Adelaide Hilton (he was on the floor with the sommelier the next night) and spent two days at another culinary hot spot, the Star of Greece. "Australian food is fantastic - it has this really interesting mix of cultures," he says.
Best moment? "In the Barossa," he declares. "There's nothing like it in the world - the Grenache vines look like trees."
Worst moment? "A speeding fine. I was doing 87kph in an 80kph area," he whispers.
Want some of it? Well, you'll have to wait until the end of the summer when Leigh and his team will start looking for next year's candidate. Watch this space.
Shorts
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