Daily Archives: October 3, 2015

The pleasures of Greek wines have passed most of us by in the UK, where sales are dominated by Australia, France and Italy.

Greece doesn’t even come near the top 10, which also features the US, Spain, South Africa, Chile, New Zealand, Germany and Argentina, according to the Wine and Spirit Trade Association.

The first London Greek Wine Festival, running October 2-4, offers a chance to get to know grape varieties such as Assyrtiko and Malagousia, which are slowly gaining attention in London.

Greece is gaining from a tiny base. Wine exports to the UK in the first seven months of this year surged 64 percent from a year earlier to 1.94 million pounds ($2.95 million). Sales in 2014 were up 24 percent from a year earlier at 2.18 million pounds. That’s barely a drop in the 15-billion-pound British wine market that year, according to Euromonitor.

Nonetheless, some varieties now make it onto London wine lists, including that of the Ivy, where 2014 Hatzidakis Assyrtiko Santorini costs 41 pounds.

“Greek wine is really, really interesting and distinctive,” Master of Wine Jancis Robinson says. “There are fantastically varied regions and natural terroirs: All those great islands with their own character.”

The festival is taking place near King’s Cross, centered on King’s Place and the Greek Larder. That’s the establishment of festival founder Theodore Kyriakou, best known as creator of the the Real Greek restaurant, which has grown into a chain since he sold it.

The festival includes talks and tastings, plus matchings of food and wine and a pop-up wine bar.

“I love Assyrtiko,” says Robinson, who is an ambassador for the festival. “It’s indigenous to the island of Santorini, which itself is a lovely place. It’s amazing that it can produce such a refreshing wine so far south.

“Greek wine has got better and better,” she says. “And the wine that people bother to import is of a very high standard. You don’t find Greek plonk here. It’s got to be good.”

source:ekathimerini.com

Deer farmers say they are getting paid less than beef producers for their meat.

Beef prices are breaking records, while the variability in the venison market, and the difficulty of processing deer, has reduced the price processors will pay.

Deer Industry Association of Australia Victorian president Andrew McKinnon stocks cattle, sheep and deer, and said he was getting paid the least for deer.

“It’s down quite a bit, and it has been for a couple of years,” he said.

“We sold cattle there a couple of weeks ago and were getting $3 per kilogram live weight, or a bit over $6 a kilogram hook price.

“So it’s about $2.50 per kilogram below what cattle are selling for at the moment.”

In Gippsland, Terramirra Park Deer Farm at Koonwarra sells venison under its own brand.

Owners Michael and Jill Vella have been in the industry for 35 years.

Mrs Vella said while there were ongoing challenges around processing deer and accessing markets, they would not have it any other way.

“Once you’ve had a deer, it’s very hard not to have a deer,” she said.

“For me it’s the sound of them in the morning, it’s watching them in the paddock, even the smell of them, which I have to say is fairly rank.

“It gets in your blood and we’re good at it. It’s what I am, I’m a deer farmer.”

She said the price discount for venison was a marketing point when asking chefs to feature the meat on their menus.

“We’re ringing them up and saying, ‘Have you thought about venison on this menu?’

“It’s easier to get [than beef]. A lot of our butchers are finding good quality beef hard to source.”

Huge distance for processing venison

It is a 300 kilometre one way trip from the Vella’s deer farm in South Gippsland to Orbost where the deer are processed in East Gippsland.

Mr Vella said while the deer coped well with the travel, it was an expensive exercise.

“Large abattoirs are not interested in niche market products,” he said.

“It makes it very hard to get into one of the bigger abattoirs.”

Mrs Vella said she worried about the decreasing number of local abattoirs.

“Local communities have lost the capacity to kill animals locally,” she said.

“You can’t process for instance a bird in this area, you have to go north of Melbourne.

“It’s the elephant in the room when it comes to local food. Suddenly there’s a step missing from the local experience, and I don’t know what the answer is to that.”

source:abc.net.au

With the first long weekend of spring approaching, thousands of people will be on their way to the beach.

But for holiday-makers along the far north New South Wales coast, that comes with the reality of swimming in waters notorious for a spate of shark attacks over winter.

Real estate agent and seasoned surfer Neil Cameron has lived in Byron Bay most of his life and says the recent attacks have left the whole surfing community in fear.

“I think it’s really impacted the town. I’ve never seen it so quiet around town,” he said.

“It’s got to be having an effect.

“We’ve had some beautiful days and we haven’t had many people on the beach because they’re probably going somewhere a bit safer to swim like the Gold Coast or even Sydney, where they’ve got protection management plans in place.”

Mr Cameron witnessed paramedics trying to save 50-year-old Paul Wilcox on Byron Bay’s main beach after he was fatally mauled by a shark in 2014.

He said the State Government should introduce shark nets while they consider other options.

“There’s other things being trialled with tagging and things like that which are not going to stop a shark from attacking anyone at the moment,” he said.

Marine scientist questions effectiveness of nets

Marine scientist Dr David Powter from the University of Newcastle said nets are not as useful as people think.

“I think one thing that people don’t understand about nets is that they’re not an entire barrier; they don’t stretch from headland to headland and provide a full protection for the beach,” he said.

“Across a typical beach, there’s hundreds of metres either side of the net … for any organism to move between.”

Some of the world’s leading shark scientists were among 70 people who gathered at a “shark summit” in Sydney this week to come up with an effective shark management strategy for the New South Wales Government.

Acoustic buoys, electronic shark shields and even shark repellents are among the options being considered.

Ballina Shire Mayor David Wright said his council is looking to install a number of electronic signs to alert beach goers to danger while he awaits an outcome from the summit.

“We’ve got the technology available where some person can sit there and actually type in on the computer and have those messages up,” he said.

“We’re also looking at building a new marine rescue tower into the sand hills [at Lighthouse Beach] and that would be very useful for monitoring anything to do with the sharks and of course river safety and surf safety.”

Club captain of the Lennox Head Surf Life Saving Club and president of the local Chamber of Commerce, Neil Kennedy, said despite all the recent hype about sharks, the school holiday season has still been very busy.

“Winter is traditionally a slow period for us and we haven’t noticed any particular additional slowness because of the situation,” he said.

“The caravan parks are full, what we definitely don’t want is a perception that people shouldn’t come here because of danger.

“The community is very well catered for here; the community is doing its best to look after the place and in general our main street businesses are looking forward to having another bumper summer.”

source:abc.net.au