Miss Sachi and I dined at Wine Connection last week. I’ve never been much of an admirer of Wine Connection — when I was a struggling journalist they were far too rough on the wallet for me and now that I’m a busy executive and epicure the place seems a bit mass-market. A bourgeois McDonalds, if you will. Such does ten years change one’s perspective.
As it turns out, we arrived during their French Festival, celebrating ten years of operation (or was it 20? I had a look at their website but, being an impersonal corporate entity, the only information is about their promotional events) so celebrated by ordering a bottle of their cheapest Australian sparkling wine, which turned out to be the Deakin Estate Brut, so pictured in this article.
I lived for three eventful years in Deakin Hall, Monash University, back in my salad days, where I learned to drink like a man and, later, to vomit out of my nose, so perhaps a bottle with a name so intimately linked to my formative years would be worth sampling.
If memory serves, the is was the second cheapest sparkling on the wine list, arriving at the table for a reasonable (for Thailand) Bt750. The cheapest sparkling was a Chilean but the difference in price wasn’t enough to convince us not try try exploring another Australian wine.
So how was it? I’d put it on the sweet side of brut, I’d even go as far as to say ‘sticky’ but that may not be entirely fair. I don’t think that we were enjoying this bottle in it’s best setting, with tapas and duck confit. I do think it would be more comfortable in a champagne flute being hold by a giggly lady in her mid-30s who doesn’t get out that much. It probably would have been better chilled.
Sachi opines to differ and, to be honest, you probably wouldn’t have to bend my arm to get my to try this again. But, if you put a gun to my head, I’d recommend selecting something a little more refined, probably while crying and after begging for my life.