Along the Hawkesbury River, near Sydney
It is well known that my home town of Sydney, Australia, has some of the world’s best seafood. Fish like barramundi, snapper, John Dory, and whiting, not to mention Sydney rock oysters, Balmain bugs and lobster.
So, to taste some delicious seafood I made the 35 km trip by train up to Brooklyn, with my dear friends Graham, Pete, Greg and Glen. Brooklyn is a humble little village, which sits on the shores of the beautiful Hawkesbury River, and backs onto the wonderful Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.
As usual, we went to our favourite little restaurant, Lifeboat Seafood. In point of fact, it is barely a restaurant, having a just few outside tables and chairs (see photo), next to a little fish shop. Mallory (see photo) helped each of us choose our favourite seafood. I had deep fried oysters and whiting fillets.
But what wine should we drink with our seafood delicacies?
Greg insisted that a 2022 Tyrrell’s Wines ‘Belford’ Semillon was the best bet. It is delicate and fresh with a broad semillon character, and was perfect for our oyster starters and fish, as it complemented rather than competed with the seafood.
Graham then proposed a 2017 Keith Tulloch’s Semillon, a more mature and round wine, which was ideal for closing out the meal.
Rather than order a dessert, at Graham’s suggestion we went straight for a “dessert style” wine, the 2022 Thomas Elevage Semillon, a splendid wine to end our Brooklyn adventure.
One of the great things about wines is the discussion and speculation that it can stimulate. So, what is an élevage wine? None of us knew the answer to this question.
Elevage by definition is the process of nurturing the wine from fermentation to barrel to bottling, elevage being the French words for rearing or raising.
As to the Thomas Elevage Semillon in question, its elevated sweetness was achieved using technology (reverse osmosis) rather than botrytis (noble rot), where some of the water component from the juice was actually extracted thereby increasing the natural sweetness to a level needed for this style of wine prior to fermentation. The juice then undergoes a relatively long, cool fermentation. Unlike the sweet wines of some other regions, they don’t use oak to mature the wine and it is bottled early to maintain its freshness.
In short, an amazing discovery of a spectacular wine, to finish off a great excursion to Brooklyn!