New York June 19 - Grange Hermitage 1952. Photo: Milton Wordley, A Year in the Life of Grange — New York June 19 - Grange Hermitage 1952. Photo: Milton Wordley, *A Year in the Life of Grange*

Wining about Grange

December 13, 2013

It’s hard to imagine life without wine.

Living in South Australia and having “grown up” working in the media, wine was and has always been part of life. And there have been many, many good ones.

While Talking Adelaide is openly un-parochial about wine – with a winemaker in the family (David Lloyd of Eldridge Estate Red Hill) on the Mornington Peninsula and a slight obsession with Champagne, and Chablis, and Burgundy….- there are lots of local wines that are truly wonderful.

Of course there is one wine from South Australia that has an international reputation above all others, Grange, bien sur. Although winemakers around Beaune must live in a bubble because none of the ones we met in May this year had heard of it.

Anyway, the point of this post is to congratulate our dear friend, the brilliant photographer Milton Wordley, whose book A Year in the Life of Grange is up for an international book award. It has won the International Gourmand Wine Books 2013 Award in Australia and now is up for the international category.

Morning tea tipple at Penfolds. As you do.

As Milton has said: “The story of Grange has fascinated me for years. From a rather rocky start, this South Australian wine has become the most famous Australian wine. People all over Australia, wine lovers or not, know of Grange. Serious wine collectors all over the world collect it. It is a wine of the world.”

Milton spent 18 months documenting the story. The result is a book totally produced in South Australia. Concept and images by Milton; words by Philip White; design by John Nowland, printed by Finsbury Green.

The book was launched on October 18, where else but at Penfold’s Magill Estate. It was a picturesque Adelaide morning – fancy drinking Grange 2004 for morning tea! With smoked oyster pasties and Grange pies by Anne Oliver.

Don’t just believe me how beautiful this book is, here’s what some others think.

James Halliday: “one of the most amazing books to ever appear on the Australian vinous landscape.’’

Huon Hooke: “an extraordinary book.”

Max Allen: “This is the biggie: one for the obsessed wine collector who already has a cellar full of great bottles. Yes, it is a lot of cash to spend on a book, but this exceptionally well-told tale of Australia’s most famous wine is also an incredibly limited, absolutely gorgeous work of art, beautiful to hold, to read, to pore over.”

Here comes the call to action: if you know someone who loves and appreciates wine and a great story, then why not consider A Year in the Life of Grange ? Perhaps as a group present, a mega-Kris Kringle? There are three editions, starting at $785.

You can find out all you need to know here at the book's website.

Apples and customised doppelgängers

August 14, 2013

Apple. A fruit. A record label. A computer used by graphic designers.

Remember the first time you saw, let alone touched an Apple product?

Do you remember why Apple computers are called Macs? As in Macintosh?

Cousin Sarah is a graphic designer and we shared a house for more than a decade from 1992. She used an Apple at work.

So did the graphic designers at Messenger, where I worked. We had PCs, they had Macs. Graphic artists or designers were the only people I knew who worked on an Apple/Macintosh product.

In the late ‘90s, Sarah brought her own Apple into our home – a turquoise iMac. I remember looking at it as if it was alien. But soooo pretty.

Now I’m sitting here writing this on my MacBook Pro; I’m on my third iPad and iPhone. I look at iTunes and the App store more often than my washing basket.

For a while I was mostly buying books iBooks (and Kindle) until I discovered Diesel and Booktopia.

In 2013, Adelaide finally joined every other reasonably sized city and got it’s own Apple store. An early 21st century mark of maturity.

Apple founder the late Steve Jobs is the subject of a new Hollywood biopic, and is portrayed by Aston Kutcher. I’m no orphan when it came to being surprised by the casting.

One of my favourite websites, Into the Gloss, sums it up really well. The trailer is enticing. And Kutcher looks the goods.

I must admit I’m also looking forward to seeing Naomi Watts portray Princess Diana and Nicole Kidman do Princess Grace.

Check out Into the Gloss’ top 37 biopic players in this slideshow and Aston's trailer here. And the Diana trailer here.

How many of these films have you seen?

Aspiring architecture in the city of spires

July 18, 2013

Today (July 18) marks the official start of a competition process to find a design for the current Royal Adelaide Hospital site. I am officially excited.

In five months time, when the winner is revealed - not that it will necessarily ever be built, we now learn - I want to be shocked, surprised, dazzled and enthralled.

Anything less and I will feel it's been a pointless exercise. We can do mediocrity in Adelaide quite well. This is a time for modernity.

The RAH site, given its location, deserves to be treated with a development that is inspiring, culturally enriching and a structure that becomes an instant iconic landmark in Adelaide. If regional or provincial cities such as East Lansing, Michigan; Baku, Azerbaijan; Guangzhou, China; Glasgow, Scotland; Zaragoza and Bilbao, Spain, and Wolfsburg, Germany can appreciate and live with groundbreaking contemporary architecture, surely we can?

Candace Bushnell here, SATC’s 15th anniversary

July 16, 2013

Carrie Bradshaw (aka Sarah-Jessica Parker) in Season 5 with that haircut. Picture: Into the Gloss

So I ran my finger along the Bs on the second shelf in our study and there it was: my 12-year-old copy of the novel Sex and The City by Candace Bushnell.

It looks like it was only read once. Unlike the box set DVDs that were watched endlessly – although not so much since Monsieur D returned to Adelaide a few years ago and Foxtel put SATC on semi-permanent rotation.

Thanks to the series’ Season 5, I’ve even had my hair cut short twice in the hope of replicating Carrie’s look for her Vogue job.

My copy of the original book carries a cover quote endorsement from Helen Fielding, she of Bridget Jones’ Diary, saying “Intriguing and highly entertaining”.

A kinda limp assessment, don’t you think, given we know what SATC became.

I’ll be taking along my copy this Friday in the hope of having it signed by Candace Bushnell, who is guest speaker at the Adelaide Business Chicks lunch on July 19, at the Convention Centre; the date just happens to be my birthday. Talk about lucking out.

It’s a sort of timely visit by CB; last month (June) was the 15th anniversary since the pilot episode of SATC first aired in the US on the HBO cable network (the book was first published in 1997 and reissued in 2001).

I just happened to be in Bali in June 1998; our hotel had US satellite TV and I saw that pilot and the second episode the following week, while my poor cousin S was becoming acquainted with the porcelain thanks to Bali Belly.

Needless to say I was hooked but had to wait until September 6, 1999, for Channel 9 here to start broadcasting it. No downloading or streaming in back then.

Anyway, if you loved Carrie’s clothes (thanks Patricia Field) in SATC – you’ll love this anniversary slideshow on one of my favourite blogs, Into the Gloss.

The important moments are all covered, the only noticeable missing for me was the slinky pink fluro dress Carrie wore to lunch with Big when he told her he was getting married (Season 2 episode 18: Ex and the City). Shaken, she trips over a chair in her haste to leave the restaurant.

The slideshow includes another favourite; the navy dress she’s wearing while stuck on a day cruise with the loved-up Charlotte and Trey when she runs into the married Big (Season 3, Episode 8: The Big Time). Actually, I think I love her magazine-clutch bag more than the dress (see screen grab shot below).

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What’s your favourite? Love to know.

Making a spectacle at the Salopian Inn, McLaren Vale

July 10, 2013

It was the out-there wishful thinking of Adelaide designer Peter Coombs to use an old bowling alley for the “gin bar” inside the newly renovated Salopian Inn, McLaren Vale.

The salvaged wood has gone into the main bar top as well as four others dotted around the Salopian, together measuring 17m in length.

Coombs was also integral to another inspired piece of recycling, choosing old Fowler Vacola glass jars for the restaurant’s interior lighting.

The Salopian restaurant and bar is a partnership involving well-known McLaren Vale chef Karena Armstrong and her husband Michael; along with wine-making couple Elena and Zar Brooks, of Heirloom Wines.

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… — Limited edition Andy Wahol-inspired 50th anniversary soup cans for sale in Adelaide

Andy Warhol "art" for sale in Adelaide

July 6, 2013

If you are into 20th century art, particularly the art movement called Pop Art, you can now pick up your very own limited-edition piece of Andy Warhol for just $1.99. But as they say in advertising, you better be quick.

Found this stack of hyper-coloured soup cans on the end of an aisle in my local Woolworths last Friday. Instead of the iconic red, white and gold label of Campbell’s condensed tomato soup, was this mash-up of purple, teal, pink and yellow that warranted a closer look.

The back labeling revealed this was a special series (discovered to be a limited run of a small 1.2 million) done by Campbell’s to mark the 50th anniversary of Warhol’s famous soup can painting series. Apparently the original ticket price in the States was just 99 cents US too. You do the maths.

The work 32 Campbell’s soup cans is in the wonderful Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), in New York. You can read about it here (see Warhol pictured in front of it below).

Not sure how these cans, which were made a year ago for the US market (the anniversary was in 2012) and distributed there with Target have ended up in suburban Adelaide – a little worse for wear, I might add. Still it was a bright moment on a dreary winter’s day.

Have you seen them in your supermarket?

Captions for above: (L-R) Anniversary details on the back of the can; They do look pretty all in rows; Andy Warhol in MoMA in front of his original work 32 Campbell's soup cans (Credit: whorange.net)

Start as you mean to go on

June 30, 2013

Start as you mean to go on - this advice is often attributed to the author Dr Seuss though I have never actually found the original statement. Another personal favourite of mine from the good doctor’s archive of sayings is:

You are in pretty good shape, for the shape you are in.

Particularly apt for me right now, as I welcome you to a different view about my hometown of Adelaide. If you click here or on About (above) you can read about the kind of tone and content you can expect to read here frequently.

Yes, the emphasis will be on Adelaide. But I’ve always been curious about how other cities and communities live because I believe that gives our lives here better context. From Adelaide it takes us such a long time to get anywhere else and visitors really have got to want to come here to make the effort.

UK singer songwriter Billy Bragg once said in an early 1990s radio interview:

Talent is borrowed, genius is stolen.

It’s a philosophy I’ve lived by for many years. You’ll read my own generated content as well as attributions and credit to many others. I’ve been an editor for more than a decade – curating content comes naturally, so expect to be offered lots of links to things I’ve found across the internet, that I hope you find as relevant, useful, surprising and interesting as I do. I love lists and appreciate tips and suggestions. So feel free to send me a link to anything you think I’ll be interested in.

2013 has been a year of upheaval personally – but as Albert Einstein once said:

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.

So, I hope you enjoy my new venture. Let me know.

Voila.