Sarah Ahmed – The Wine Detective

I’m back from holidays this week.  While I was away I received some incredibly exciting news – I’m one of 14 people selected to attend the prestigious Landmark Australia Tutorial 2010 in the Yarra Valley this September.

Julia Harding MW of Jancis Robinson’s Purple Pages and Jamie Goode, The Wine Anorak, batted for England at last year’s inaugural tutorial.  I was extremely envious reading about all the fine and rare wines they’d tasted in the company of some of Australia’s finest winemakers and commentators (some of which are pictured above, photo: Australian Wine & Brandy Corporation).  Australians are terrific wine communicators so I’m very sure this will be a fabulous learning curve and one that I look forward to sharing with you – I cannot wait!  Meantime, you can find out more about it here.

And it was both sweet and somehow appropriate that I received the news while Down Under in Western Australia – it’s where I first set foot on Aussie soil, first judged at an Australian wine show and I’ve worked vintage there.  This time, I was “jus chilun” on holidays and very good it was too to just sit back and drink the wines – no spitting, hardly any note-taking and, of course, I got the chance to really immerse myself in Western Australia’s rugged natural beauty (about which more later).

It was also sweet and appropriate that on this trip I met John Wade.  Wade has produced some of the finest Australian Cabernets I’ve tasted, namely Wynns John Riddoch 1982 and Howard Park Cabernet Merlot 1994 (Wade founded Howard Park in 1986).  On this trip, Howard Park Riesling 1997 and Cabernet Merlot 1991 slipped down ever so nicely….  Anyway, I’d heard he was now making fabulous, fine chocolates in Denmark, Great Southern where I happened to be staying for a few days.  How could I resist calling into his shop, The Dark Side Chocolates?

Talking (and tasting!) with Wade (pictured in the shop), I could well understand why he’s been tempted over to the dark side. Though he still makes wine for Rickety Gate in Denmark, he’s a passionate and creative chocolatier and he’s putting the terroir into chocolate, using exciting and unique Australian bush flavours like wattleseed (like coffee infused with caramel), gum (as in eucalyptus) and finger limes.  Once a winemaker, always a winemaker, and his grasp of flavour, structure and balance account for a precocious talent with the dark one.  I was dumbfounded to discover that Wade only started to study chocolate in 2007 with Paul Kennedy, a winner of The Australian Chocolate Masters Competition, who teaches at Savour Chocolate and Patisserie School in Melbourne. Though initially intimidated when he discovered that his fellow students were patisserie chefs, after the first exercise – a tasting of 20 chocolates – Wade was in his element.

So much so that, the following year, Wade set up shop in Denmark.  Keeping his cabinets stocked has pushed him to experiment and refine his chocolates. Focusing intently on a batch of strawberry gum in the making, he gave me a taste of warm white chocolate infused with eucalyptus olida.  Hard to believe there was no strawberry fruit in play, but Wade opened a tupperware box containing the crushed eucalyptus olida leaves and sure enough, it smelled of strawberries!  A box of wattle seed revealed a glorious bouquet of coffee with rich caramel undertones.  Wade is keen to differentiate his chocolates from others by using local ingredients like these.

His chocolates are also very distinctive for their fine balance of flavour and structure -  winemaking skills that come to the fore in his lemon myrtle chocolate and a lime caramel.  In London, I’ve often found that fancy chocolates incorporating herbs or flowers can taste a little soapy, but not so here.  The lemon myrtle is delicately infused.  As for the lime caramel, Wade prefers Japanese limes which, less aggressive than common limes, make a subtle foil for the buttery caramel.  And, of course, wine features in his chocolates, notably Shiraz (with beetroot) and a 20 year old Stanton & Killeen liqueur Muscat.  Though water (in alcohol) is the enemy of chocolate, Wade’s work around is not to boil the wine like other chocolatiers -  as a winemaker, he readily appreciates that this boils off flavour.  Instead, he uses wine in relatively small amounts, only gently heating it to reduce water content and maintain flavour concentration.

Wade says his biggest challenge has revolved around presentation – true, not a prerequisite of winemaking, but it’s hard to believe when you look at his chocolate boxes and best-selling echidnas (Australia’s hedgehog-like spiny ant eaters), both pictured.  Wade is clearly having a ball making chocolate and I was sorry to have just missed the Taste of Great Southern Festival – apparently his “hamburgers” had people licking their plates clean.  Chocolate burgers, finger lime jelly for lettuce, macaroons for buns….I don’t eat meat, but that’s my kind of veggie burger!