Stuffed

Yesterday I did what many Perthians do when they have a free Sunday afternoon and a houseful of international guests – I drove them out to the Swan Valley for a tour of the wine district.


The Swan Valley is a fertile area dotted with wineries of all sizes, from obscure family vineyards to colossal international booze conglomerates. Between them are the sort of businesses likely to appeal to inebriated tourists with bulging wallets and lowered sales resistance – restaurants, art galleries, craft shops and one big shed specializing in nougat. There were six of us in total, so we took The Flatmate’s Saab and my friend PM’s Toyota Corolla. We could have taken my MX5, but I relaxed my otherwise firm ‘No Corollas’ rule because it was 39 degrees in the shade and for all their faults Toyotas have remarkable airconditioners.


We started at the soulless corporate hellhole that is Sandalford Wines. Well, maybe “hellhole” is a little extreme – somehow I doubt that Hell has outdoor mist sprays to keep its patrons cool. However I’m pretty sure that, like Sandalford’s, Hell’s gift shop has $100 wine glasses.


We’d hoped to have lunch in their restaurant, but the whole place was booked out. There were people everywhere. Not to cast any aspersions, but I think that it'd be safe to assume that every single person there owned a very large plasma television and was planning to buy their mother an Andre Rieu CD for Christmas. After we'd been there a little while, The Flatmate cast a penetrating gaze around the establishment and said, "So wine-tasting... am I right in thinking that it's a bourgeois thing to do in this country?"


"You've been here half an hour," I replied. "And you still need to ask that question?"


"Fair enough," he said, and went off to collect his Scaly Mates, who were rather more boisterous after tasting half a dozen different wines than when they'd arrived.


I hadn't tried any wine, partly because I was driving, and partly because Sandalford has the gall to charge $2.50 per person for the privilege of tasting their wines. I imagine that this is because they struggle to turn a profit. It can't be easy trying to get money out of happy, boozy tourists who have turned up specifically to buy your product.


As we pulled out of the carpark and up the long, imperial drive, I noticed that it was signposted as having a 20kph speed limit... which is odd, as the speed limit on the way in is 40kph. Obviously they expect people to develop markedly lower reaction times between arriving and leaving. However by this time I’d had enough of the place. "To hell with you and your rules!" I said. "This is private property, and I'll do whatever speed I damn well like!" I managed to hit 80 before having to brake hard and sling the Corolla onto the highway. Meaningless little acts of rebellion are my favourite kind.


We proceeded to the decided smaller scale, family-owned Talijanich winery, where wine tasting is free (unless you want to quaff their most expensive bottles, which is fair enough). I bought a bottle of their complicated Graciano, about which I have waxed rhapsodic on previous occasions. I’d say snide and entirely unfair things about them too, but it goes against the Australian character to attack the little guy.


But the next place we visited, Houghton’s, gets no such free pass. It’s another of the grand "destination" wineries, situated in another landscape dominated by rolling lawns, gracious trees, and little pockets of grape vines that are probably more decorative than functional.


It was late in the afternoon and it was obvious that the staff were tired and heartily sick of... well... everybody. They spoke in weary monotones that suggested their souls were being slowly eroded by yet another cashed-up philistine with the discerning palate of a dog eyeing a toilet bowl. I would have liked to have heard their interior monologues as they recited the information about each wine:


This is our Verdelho. It's a full, soft wine made from late-picked grapes, not that you care, because you're just pretentious idlers who want to be able to tell your friends that you went wine tasting this weekend even though you have absolutely no idea about wine and couldn't tell a Grange Hermitage from supermarket balsamic vinegar.


Having failed to buy anything from Houghton's, we elected to end the afternoon with a visit to the Margaret River Chocolate Factory. Despite the name, this is not so much an artisanal chocolaterie as a big, blocky monument to corporate cynicism. It not only sells chocolate but also jam, olive oil, mustard, icecream, chutney… anything that will sell at double the normal price if you slap a cunningly minimalist designer label on it.


The store was busy when we arrived, and then about five minutes later a massive tour bus pulled in. We were just in the process of buying some wildly overpriced Rocky Road as the tourists poured into the store. The Margaret River Chocolate Factory has a couple of huge bowls of chocolate buds near the front door, placed there so that customers can sample their milk and dark varieties before they purchase. The tour bus people fell onto them like starving, possibly menopausal wolves. I couldn't help but look at them askance as various chubby girls jostled each other for the space to drag their cupped hands up the sides of the bowls and collect as much of the rapidly diminishing stock of chocolate as they could.


Sweet merciful crap, I thought. It's middle-quality chocolate, not little nuggets of platinum and diamonds. I may be a fat bastard with poor impulse control, but at least I don't lunge at free chocolate like a Prader-Willi Syndrome kid let off the leash.


So we took our chocolate and our wines and headed home. The Flatmate hit the supermarket and bought everything we needed for a barbecue. PM attended to the meat, TFSM2 made a salad, TFSM3 made dessert, TFSM1 got out of our way and fell asleep on the couch, The Flatmate made salad dressing, and I shuttled between them doing everything that fell between the cracks. In no time at all we had a fabulous feast to eat out on the patio in the warm evening light.


Did we enjoy the wine? No, we drank some cheap stuff we got at the supermarket. The Rocky Road was good, though.