Text 8980, 156 rader
Skriven 2006-12-18 08:00:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: more trip 695
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We slid into a daily breakfast pattern, Carol eating a piece
of toast with the jam of the day along with a bowl of
yogurt, Glen a cheese-Vegemite sandwich, and myself a few
slices of Hahndorf garlic mettwurst, which to everyone's
horror caused me to burp garlic all through the day. Odd and
exotic fruits varied this routine.

A quick early trip to the Gepps Cross farmers' market north
of the city yielded apricots, loquats, mushrooms, sweetcorn,
and some various Asian vegetables, which we used up over the
course of the week.

As I had solos coming up when I got back but didn't want
the hassle of dragging an instrument through all kinds of
security (who knows what they would have thought at
Melbourne), Glen had found a friend of a friend with a
violin I could use when I was there. This person turned
out to be a 90-year-old former member of both the Adelaide
(said to have been a founder) and Melbourne symphonies who
was willing to part with her beloved Vuillaume for a couple
weeks, as she had recently hurt her shoulder and couldn't
play any more. I prevailed on her to lend me a somewhat
less eminent instrument - after all, it was just to noodle
on for an hour a day - and gave her a pep talk on how she
should certainly knit well enough to be able to play again,
and anyway, she could continue teaching.

Our next stop was the ABC concert at Veritas in the Barossa
Valley, where Glen and Carol shared an appetizer plate,
which didn't have anything that interested me (other than
Maggie Beer's liver pate, but I've had that before) tasted
a fairly nice trio of wines, a Riesling, a Semillon, and a
Shiraz-Malbec. I believe we got a bottle of this last for
the concert, but I was too interested in the music to
remember what I drank. Ha ha ha.

The group was the new Australian String Quartet, less
eminent than the old one, but with the advantage of being
made up of four comely and energetic young ladies. Their
taxing and telling program consisted of the 8th quartet by
Peter Sculthorpe, one of Australia's most famous composers
(and whose music, as it turns out, I found a bit of a waste
of time - the woman who had lent me the violin had described
it by making wheep and whoop noises and gesturing with her
arms to the extent she was able to; when the quartet got to
a passage that duplicated the sounds that she had made in
her living room, it was all we could do not to laugh) and
the tortured but exquisite Beethoven Op. 59/3.

The playing was enthusiastic and youthful, but I think that
the music suffered on occasion with the exaggerated gestures
to which such playing is prone. Also there were a number of
odd studently lapses. Cuteness does count for a lot, and the
applause was warm and appreciative.

[It turns out the real Australian String Quartet (who had
parted ways with their board of directors for both artistic
and practical reasons) had formed, with new cellist Peter
Rejto, the Grainger Quartet, which - I found out too late -
was giving a competing concert down in McLaren Vale, which
would have been a better concert and also more convenient to
Hazelwood Park, where the violin had been, only it cost $42
a head, as opposed to free for the other. Perhaps Glen had
deliberately shielded me from this information, in honor of
the emptiness of my bank account, but I'd have gladly paid
the difference, which would have been deductible anyway.]

After the concert - I didn't particularly want to hang
around and tell the artists how wonderful they were - there
was time to look in on Peter Lehmann Wines - now without the
hands-on influence of Peter and Margaret Lehmann but still
an important winery.

We had time to sample a number before closing time.

Eden Valley Riesling 06 - lime and tropicals, lively acid,
Glen and Carol liked this a lot

Barossa Riesling 05 - apple and citrus, a little more muted
than the above; I preferred it as a pretty classic example

Black Queen sparkling Shiraz 98 - this is definitely not
my style, but it tickled my tastebuds more than most of its
ilk - a lot of plums, slightly offdry, but why put fizz
to it?

Eden Valley Shiraz 01 - nice at the price, spicy and very
plummy, not so deep as the below but more ready to drink

Futures Barossa Shiraz 03 - rather alcoholic on the nose,
but creamy, chocolaty, and plummy; pretty typical, pretty
nice

Mentor 01 - minty, licoricy, curranty. A little green for me

8 Songs 01 - I thought this more flavorsome than the below,
with better fruit, but a bit high in the acid

Stonewell 01 - not so concentrated I thought as previous
vintages, but still dark - the chocolate of four years ago
giving way to more coffee, but strength of plumminess was
still impressive.

We closed them up, buying a couple bottles of stickies
in the process. As it was still quite light out, we took a
short detour to Lyndoch to visit what had been Ward's
Gateway Cellars - the building is now disused and overgrown
but the vines have been trimmed and kept up nicely! There
is posted at the door a notice from a group called Angel
Pty. Ltd. to take over the winery license, but it's dated
over a year ago. We poked around - I found one door that
was unlocked, and when I opened it hundreds of earwigs and
centipedes fell down on my head. The very picture of
desolation. Ray of course passed away New Year's Day 2005,
having retired a year or two earlier. It was a sad moment,
which Glen and I shared while Carol snoozed contentedly
in the back of the car.

A rollicking and high speed trip back down to the main
highway, with Glen telling tales about his old motorcycle
and various companions he'd entertained in his youth.

On the way up, we'd passed a restaurant called House of the
Red Dragon in a shopping mall; as I'm as close to a red
dragon as most people are likely to meet, we stopped in
for a look on the way back and decided to stay, despite the
place being a tomb at 6 and its having the look of a den of
culinary iniquity: I think we were influenced by the
whimsical zodiac figures on the walls, including the
dragon next to the monkey.

I ordered a rather south Asian meal, given that other than
these things the menu looked like what one might find in a
bad Chinese restaurant with nobody Chinese in it.

Squid satay turned out to be your ordinary squid stir-fry
sitting in some very creamy peanut sauce, heaped around a
citronella-fueled flame. Oddly, the dish tasted quite good,
especially the bits that had fallen into the citronella oil.
We asked for some chiles, which improved it yet some.

Roast pork bee hoon (they called it mee hoon) was 
unimpeachable, and the amount of pork was generous. Just
like what you'd get at a noodle stall in Singapore and for
only two or three times as much.

A dish of curry vegetables had your curry-powder-based
sauce and a sprinkle of coconut on top; hokey but tasty,
and Carol is a sucker for anything with coconut in it.

With a bottle of cheap fizz we made a surprisingly
satisfying if declasse and decidedly foreign meal.

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