Cake Wines, as the name may suggest, are all about the good times. To help popularise their feeling that wine should be fun and inclusive, the winemakers throw rooftop parties, collaborate with DJs, and work with artists such as Kill Pixie and Beci Orpin. Now, to celebrate the arrival of the warm weather, they’re doing a series of lunches in Sydney’s inner south and west, bringing together local chefs and wine lovers in community gardens to eat, drink and make merry.
At the first of the lunches, held in conjunction with Glebe’s St Helens Community Garden last Saturday, a demographically diverse bunch of revellers walked the garden with its manager, Jock Keene, before sitting down to a killer spread cooked by Chiswick chef Richie Dolan. The tunes were perfectly tuned, Cake head winemaker Sarah Burvill spoke with a candour that had the crowd in stitches, and the food was mighty fine, not least the wood-fired porchetta and the salad of radishes, bitter leaves and grains.
The next three events are just as promising: on Saturday 21 it’ll be Jordan Muhamed, the chef of Thievery, at the Ultimo Community Garden; Saturday 5 December is Mike McEnearney, late of Kitchen by Mike, at Carriageworks Farmers’ Market (with Cake young winemaker Richie Harkham standing in Burvill’s stead); Saturday 12 December will be Bobby Fry of Redfern Continental at 107 Projects rooftop garden in Redfern, while the final shindig for the year, held at Charlie’s Garden in Redfern on December 19, will feature none other than Gregory Llewellyn from Hartsyard on the pans.
The feasts make for a great afternoon, and $20 from the sale of each case on the day gets donated to the host garden or market. Get into it.
Cake Wines Community Feasts, $89 for lunch and paired Cake Wines (or James Squire beer), 21 November, 5 December, 12 December and 19 December
