Fully Worked in a Bottle - 16 June 2009
The O'Leary Walker team hit gold once more with this French inspired Sauvignon Blanc.
In motoring, rev-head parlance, the term 'fully worked' could mean anything
from having the cylinder heads shaved in your vehicle to the engine
management chip being tweaked or going the whole white knuckled gamut and
committing to fully worked, rubber-burning, race-ready capability.
But in the sedate and elegant world of quality Australian winemaking there
has emerged a "Fully Worked" sauvignon blanc.
O'Leary Walker wines have produced an FW
(Fully Worked) sauvignon blanc at the request and guidance of legendary
chef and restaurateur Tony Bilson for his three hatted Bilson's Restaurant
in Sydney's Radisson Plaza hotel and his Spanish 'worked' Number One Wine
Bar at Circular Quay.
O'Leary and Walker both have impeccable winemaking credentials boasting
some 300 gold medals, 60 trophies and a brace of International Red
Winemaker of the Year Awards between them. In their joint reincarnation
they produce some pretty damned fine wines including another sauvignon
blanc that hasn't been fully worked.
But Le Bilson is a Francophile and his sauvignon blanc bent is closer to
the nuances of Sancerre in the Loire than some of the more traditional
grassy and herbaceous offerings coming out of the Adelaide Hills. So he
persuaded the boys, as you would a donkey with a carrot - almost a dare.
FW is a more restrained local sauvignon blanc with notes of grapefruit and
lemon with a hint of baking bread tantalising the nose. Compared with its
zingier stable-mate it displays less tropical fruit aromas and more subtle
herbaceous cut grass characteristics. Fully worked, this Oz sauvignon does
the business.
But then Bilson has being doing the business successfully for four
decades. His extraordinary influence on Australian dining is unique. From
his first restaurant in 1971, La Pomme d'Or in suburban Melbourne to the
legendary Tony's Bon Gout in Sydney and later the milestone Berowra Waters
and later, Kinsela's (where a young Tetsuya Wakuda discovered his love of
and flair for classical French cooking technique), then Bilsons's (now
Quay), Fine Bouche, Hotel Intercontinental's Treasury Restaurant, Ampersand
and Canard are all testimony. Having an intellectual meddle in the
development of a wine from a team as talented as David O'Leary and Nick
Walker is a natural progression.
Written by Stuart White, Business Spectator
At the risk of lowering the tone and quoting Molly Meldrum: "do yourself a
favour" and seek out the O'Leary Walker offerings. And to experience the FW
in its natural habitat immerse yourself at Bilson's or at Number One Wine
Bar where saucy chef, Miguel Maestre should almost be back from working
with Ferran Adria at El Bulli in Spain