MH GOLD: Hot Pants and a Hot Chance

DATELINE: LONDON 2012.
DAY 5:



We're into the midst of the fun now, boys and girls. Whilst London 2012 hasn't so far been the cascade of Gold Medals tipped by some prior to the Games, we've seen some spectactular efforts from Aussies that have just dipped out (take a bow Emily Seebohm and Bronte Barratt) and Day 4 even saw Kynan Maley pick up a very creditable 6th in that traditional Aussie event, the white-water canoeing slalom.

The great thing about our modest total so far, is we can take great solace in the fact we are streets ahead on the medal tally than the Poms. Nothing like a little skiting over the fact whilst the chips are down. Though beware, when asked today if he thought Great Britain could exceed Australia's total in the London 2012 medal tally, London part-mayor-part-bear Boris Johnson left us all in no doubt with a very emphatic... "Yes, I think we can." Fighting words indeed...




And to further up the rivalry, we in the wide brown land were all thoroughly relieved to know our CSIRO scientists hadn't fallen asleep at the wheel, with the news that we too have the technology to match the Brits in the Great War of the Hot Pants. Sir Chris Hoy was quoted as saying, "The zips mean you can take them off..." revealing some amazing leaps forward in sporting apparel technology. I mean, ZIPS! WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF NEXT?! Thank fully the CSIRO have assured us that our Aussie trackstars will also be able to remove their hot pants when required.

So it moves us on to tonight's medal prospects. I think we'll be battling it out with the Poms once again tonight as we head down to Dorney Lake for the rowing. Our lanky ladies, Kate Hornsey and Sarah Tait will take it up to the British lassies Heather Stanning and Helen Glover whilst daylight will limp in third. Sure to be a cracking encounter. Also out on the water will be the big boys in the Men's Eights. Yep, this final will be a wide open affair, with our lads standing a pretty good chance against some out-of-form Yanks, the Poms and the Germans and Canadians. A ripper spectacle...

Out on the roads it'll be the "Yellow Wiggle" this time resplendent in blue. Bradley Wiggins looks a safe odds-on favourite for the 44km Road Time Trial. Cadel has decided to have a spell, which just leaves us with Wiggo's Sky team-mate Michael Rogers to have a dip for the wide brown. Expect GB's first gold here tonight...




Back poolside, its time for the MISSILE to fire, or whatever other lamo pun you want to attach to tonight's 100m Freestyle final. James Magnussen actually looks in pretty good form, and it'd be great to see him rip out a stonking time in what is set to be a thumping final, with the smooth Brazilian Cesar Cielo and 2nd-fastest qualifier Nathan Adrian snapping at (hopefully) his heels. Another BIG chance in the pool tonight are our Beijing Golden Girls in the 4 x 200m Freestyle Relay. With Steph Rice sitting this race out this year, it'll be up to compatriots Schlanger (great name), Campbell , Palmer and Barratt to bring home the gold.

WHAT TO DRINK:

On name alone, we're going to crack a NEVER MIND THE ANABOLICS IPA tonight. A newie from those wacky Aberwegians up there at Brewdog, it should be ideal for gazing at those pumped-up swimming bodies.


Cheers!

Johnno and Mitch

Mitchell Harris Urban Cellar Door - The Progress so far...

The creation of our new urban cellar door is well underway this week as we tackled the walls and floors, 120 years of dust, grease and sweat blown away with some high-pressure water, revealing red brick walls which have kept their patina of years of workshop and produce store history.

See some of the pictures of the workshop prior to kicking off HERE

Over the next few weeks, our hoardes of builders, craftsmen and designers will march on in and create our Cellar Door, which we hope will be open early in the spring.

Ten great food and wine spots in Ballarat

On the surface, it's hard to see Ballarat as a great foodie destination. But scratch a little harder and there are heaps of great little spots popping up around the place.

Here, I'll run through ten great suggestions for somewhere terrific to eat and drink if you're visiting our great town or even if you live here and need a suggestion to get you up and moving for some new tastes.


1. Breakfast at L'Espresso.

A Ballarat institution. Some ripper ways to kick off the day here. I personally love the Parmesan Scrambled Eggs, a freshly squeezed OJ and a long macchiato, but there are myriad choices to keep you and yours happy and content. A top spot to pick up some cool new tunes from Greg's CD selection too!

2. CAKE Bakeshop, in Main Road

Can thoroughly recommend the "Red Velvet" cupcakes and get into some truly wicked "Grounded Pleasures" hot chocolate.

3. John Harbour, Butcher

One of our town's legends. He and his band o' butchers are permanently cheery (even on the crowded Saturday mornings) and provide consistently excellent meat. Any cut you want, plus some great smallgoods seasonally ranging from Christmas Hams to haggis!

4. Eclectic Tastes

Serving truly excellent coffee, a constantly changing menu of interesting lunches, and a must-have lemon-curd muffin after.

5. Beers at the Lake View

No better place to be in the afternoon as the sun sets over a shimmering Lake Wendouree. Some ice-cold Coopers Pale or Asahi on tap, and plenty more choices (inc. a cheeky Mitchell Harris Rosé or Fumé) in the fridge...

6. Forge Pizza

Rock up to pick up your brilliant crispy-crusted pizza and you'll see this joint is absolutely pumping. expect a bit of a wait for your dinner, but it's ABSOLUTELY worth it.

7. Campanas' Stockade Cellars

Love wandering around Campanas', always some new and interesting drops to tantalise the tastebuds, and now with a rocking deli it's got a bit of everything. Brilliant smallgoods and a great range of cheeses and other bits and pieces. A massive selection of wines both local and from afar. You can really spend ages in here.

8. Craig's Royal Hotel

When it comes to institutions, this is it. An amazing restoration of the original 1850s hotel, it now has brilliant meals 7 NIGHTS A WEEK. The absolute go-to choice especially on those difficult Sunday thru Tuesday nights...

9. The Ballaarat

This "old society" club has been restored into a fantastic restaurant with really good modern cuisine and some ripper local wines. Get in and try it out, it's excellent.

10. Dessert and Wines at Lydiard Wine Bar

This is the ideal way to see out the night. The dessert tasting platter is a particular sensation, and the extensive wine list showcases the best of our region. A very cool venue to relax and savour the tastes and ambience...


So there you go, a few suggestion for your next little jaunt.
I'll update with some newies to try out soon....

The Mitchell Harris Winery (-to-be) ...a sneak peek!

The great old facade of our new Mitchell Harris home.

This month we've made some terrific new leaps ahead in the Mitchell Harris adventure. One of the most exciting is the purchase of a new headquarters for Mitchell Harris Wines. Hopefully over the next few months to a year we'll see the advent of a new urban Cellar Door, and a warehouse and cellar for our goods, and potentially even start doing some of our smaller batch winemaking right here in the middle of Ballarat!

The old ledger book circa 1896

We've been lucky enough to find a terrific old shop and warehouse that started life as a stables / livery in the 1890s, and became what was probably one of Ballarat's first motor garages around the time of WW1. It spent the next few decades as a canvas / tent-maker's workshop, and since the mid-70s has been an electrical motor workshop.

Heaps of great old Victorian details (in need of some love...)

Our new home is right in the middle of Ballarat's CBD.

A panorama view of Ballarat from the back balcony.

Tons of character, tons of history and tons of space. Just what we need...

The cluttered but characterful front-of-house, hopefully soon-to-be our Cellar Door.

Johnno's new world in the old bluestone stables / garage / workshop (WINERY!!)

Over the next few months we'll post more pics and let you know as soon as you pop in for a glass or two!

Mitchell Harris Wines at Spring Graze Ballarat

A few pictures from a great night at Lydiard Wine Bar this week. Spring Graze was a satellite event of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival and showcased the best of fresh spring produce along with the range of Mitchell Harris wines.

We hand-disgorged a dozen bottles of our new sparkling, Sabre, which was served with fresh plump oysters. The dry, aperitif style was a brilliant match for this seafood canapé.

A Thai salad of spanner crab showed off chef Damien Jones' heritage in Thai cuisine brilliantly, and was matched with our 2011 Sauvignon Blanc Fumé, and our 2011 Rosé.

Through the night we patched in Johnno from his wine-show judging in Canberra, to introduce the sneak preview of Sabre. A great way to bring him in as a part of the evening, but obviously he would have preferred to indulge....

An incredible main of a rare rolled roast of Goldfields Spring Lamb was some of the best lamb I've ever tasted, and a brilliant centrepiece with our reds, 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon and 2009 Shiraz.

And a sublime way to finish the night was a dessert of blue cheese, pear and apple, matched with the fruit richness of our Special Release Muscat.

Make sure if you get a chance to drop into Lydiard Wine Bar in Ballarat

Special thanks to Alicia's sister Sally for the gorgeous images...

 www.sallymckay.com.au 

Mitchell Harris Success at the Ballarat Wine Show

This week saw the annual Ballarat Wine Show take place at Bray Raceway.

The competition sees entries from Ballarat and the surrounding wine regions: Grampians, Pyrenees, Bendigo, Heathcote, Macedon and Geelong.

A great chance for us to benchmark some of our new releases and see what some of the other great producers in our area our doing.

And, of course, a bit of love for some of our babies. This even included a silver (rare for a pinkie) for our 2011 Rosé. A great lid-dipping to Johnno for his great work in crafting our current range, which is finding its way onto wine-lists around the country.

Mitchell Harris Wines and the iPad

With the release of the iPad today, we thought we'd explain how here at Mitchell Harris as we've incorporated the iPad into our everyday workflow. With a couple of iPads, our iPhones, home and work computers and some cloud technology we can all stay in touch, have up-to-date figures at hand, and stay on top of sales and marketing.








A few of the benefits of bringing the iPad into Mitchell Harris Wines:

Saving trees and the clutter of paper tasting notes and pricing documents. On our trade visits, sommeliers and wine-buyers can peruse prices and winemaking information without piles of paper being printed out and cluttering up offices and bars. Winemaking info is always at hand when showing the wines.
Any documents that sommeliers want to keep can be emailed through immediately.

Staying on top of inventory. We know continuously where stock is being sent, and what remains in the warehouse or winery at any particular time.

Sales orders can be sent through immediately to the warehouse, and invoices generated, receipts sent, all pretty much at the site of the sale.

Using the Apps such as Numbers, we can work on our production or sales spreadsheets on a train or anywhere, continuously uploading them to our "cloud," where we can all contribute at any time.

Our photo library becomes a "stock library" where we have access to Mitchell Harris images (such as bottle images,) that we can then use in blogs, emails or the like. (It also looks terrific as a slideshow when out pouring and selling booze!)

Getting photos onto the iPad is really easy with the camera connector, then editing them with Photogene, CameraBag or something similar we can share great images in no time.

Blogging (I'm writing this on the ipad using BlogPress now) or staying in touch via Twitter or Facebook is obviously a doddle with the iPad, and makes good use of the odd spare moment. So too is replying to emails whilst out and about.

It's an ultimate note-pad / diary / ideas depository.

A bit of down-time whilst on the road is easily filled with some books on iBooks or a couple of mags on the Zinio app.

So there are just a few ways the iPad has helped a tiny winemaking business like ours, love to hear if you've any great ideas or tips.

And, of course, here's our fearless winemaker, John Harris using a massive spreadsheet during his trial of the brand new iPad...





Stick to the fermenters and barrels JH!

Burns Night: Haggis wrapped in Butterflied Leg of Lamb

Last night we gathered the Scots, the ex-pats, the pipers, and all and sundry together for an early Burns night supper. Hanging about in kilts in 30°C late sun certainly contrasted with the frosty nights we remember in Scotland.

We tried a bit of an experiment in combining the two meats here, the beaut haggis spices infiltrating the lamb, with the juicy lamb keeping the haggis nice and moist.

The haggis: Here in Australia we prefer our haggis wild and freshly shot, keeps that nice gamely flavour compared with those flabby barley-fed specimens raised on the big haggis farms out here and in Scotland...

Haggis...a couple of tasty specimens.

What we used:

850g Haggis
1.5kg Leg of Lamb, butterflied. (your butcher can do this, or there are plenty of you-tube vids on how-to, if you fancy a good boning yourself!)

We marinated the lamb in:
Red wine
Garlic
Rosemary
Thyme
Mint
Salt & Pepper
Marinated for a few hours or overnight if possible.





Then in a big pot of salted water we boiled the haggis for about an hour.
Purely boiling the haggis, you'd probably want about 75 mins, but we pulled it up short as it would still cook when in the roasting lamb.





Then we took it out, peeled the haggis skin, and set the "haggis water" aside for reducing into a sauce.

Lay the haggis in the open butterflied lamb, then wrap it into a roll, and truss it up with butcher's string.

Just wait, it WILL look OK soon...

Fire the oven up to 200°C, and fire up a big pan on the stove on high heat.
Sear the outside of your lamb/haggis roll , then it's into the preheated oven.

25 minutes at 200°C then rest the meat for 10-15 minutes.

We sliced it in half-inch slices, then served with roasted tatties (spuds) and neeps (turnips in UK, we call 'em swedes here in Oz) boiled, mashed with a bit of salt, pepper and cream.

Succulent roast lamb leg, stuffed with haggis.

Pour the reduction of "haggis-juice" and the pan juices over the top...





A cool climate Shiraz has just the right balance of spices and fruit here, we think. We drank Dalwhinnie 2007 Moonambel Shiraz (nice Scots-flavoured name too!), absolutely stunning with this dish. The Mitchell Harris Pyrenees Shiraz would be a sublime little match too, we reckon ;-).

Of course then it's time for a wee bit ay Burns verse...we'll leave it to you to pick your own...(and translate!)

Richard delivers the Burns verse...

*pure-deid-brilliant Haggis actually obtained from the remarkable John Harbour the Butcher, in Ballarat.

Apres le déluge... Lake Wendouree full again.

Just a few scenes here from the morning jog around Lake Wendouree in our home town of Ballarat.

An empty Lake Wendouree in 2008

After a week where we have scored almost half the year's average rainfall, Lake Wendouree has filled for the first time since 2002. In the intervening years it has been something between a puddle and a dustbowl in the middle of town, and it is fantastic to see the lake 75mm above capacity and looking beautiful.

Here are a few shots from my morning run, taken and edited "on-the-run" on my iPhone...