Hot 100 2017: drinks trends

Spitting Image

Keen to reduce their waste, the organisers of last year’s Rootstock wine festival in Sydney came up with the idea of distilling the contents of the popular event’s many spit buckets – hundreds of litres of expectorated chardonnay and pinot and amber wines and cloudy wines. The result, processed at nearby Poor Toms Gin, is a fine grappa (some bottled as is, some matured in cask) tentatively named Disco Pash – because, as distiller Griffin Blumer quipped, “it’s like a kiss from a stranger in a nightclub”. poortomsgin.com.au

Red China

Débuting a brand-new wine at $500 a bottle seems like a naked play for the wine speculation dollar, but the story of Ao Yun, the first foray into winemaking in China from French luxury giant Moët Hennessy, is much more interesting than it may initially seem. Made from mostly cabernet sauvignon grapes hand-picked from vines terraced on vertiginous slopes high in Yunnan province, the wine has a fascinating backstory. An array of challenges ranging from altitude to access meant that the 2013 vintage, now on sale, was made the old-fashioned way, the organic fruit hand-sorted and vinified in amphorae originally made for the Chinese spirit baiju. Long story short: one of the world’s biggest wine conglomerates has made a wine that might unite the natural-wine crowd and Bordeaux-loving classicists in their admiration. Or at least those of them who are willing to part with $500 a bottle. moet-hennessy-collection.com.au

High Spirits

Over the past 18 months or so, enterprising local spirits-slingers have raised the bar with their pre-packaged cocktails. The Everleigh Bottling Co’s range of four core classics is – as you’d expect from this bastion of bartending – flawless and beautiful; The Aussie Tipple Company range, meanwhile, uses exclusively local artisan spirits from top distillers such as Belgrove in Tassie; and the seasonal concoctions from New World Projects (aka Starward Whisky in Melbourne) are outstanding. theeverleigh.com; aussietipple.com; starward.com.au

Corker vino

Thanks to the invention of the Coravin – a gadget that inserts a thin spike through the cork and extracts a glassful of wine, replacing the empty space with inert gas, keeping the remaining wine fresh for months – an increasing number of restaurants are now selling rare wines by the glass, and at appropriately rarefied prices. At the time of writing, Grossi Florentino was offering 10-year-old Sassicaia for $96 a glass, and the Royal Mail was pouring 20-year-old Château d’Yquem as part of its $250 French wine dégustation pairing. And Coravin has just launched a screwcap version, meaning all those fine Australian and Kiwi wines that moved away from cork from the early 2000s can now also be offered by the glass. coravin.com

Coffee express

Filter coffee is a staple in speciality cafés, but it can be time-consuming to make. Now there’s a speedier alternative: the SP9 by Marco. It brews coffee like a pour-over, producing consistent single-serve filters, using your favourite manual brewing device – a Kalita or V60, say. But instead of having to painstakingly stand there pouring the hot water, you can press go and walk away – the SP9 does it for you. “The SP9 allows us to sell more filter coffee,”says Nawar Adra, owner of Collective Roasting Solutions in Sydney. “We can make fresh, fast filters from multiple roasters and multiple single origins, while still having time to chat to the customers.”

Designer labels

Among the low-intervention wine set, high-impact labels are making waves. Bottles from Jauma, Momento Mori and Domaine Mămărutá are works of art in their own right. The prize for most memorable design of the last vintage, though, goes to Patrick Sullivan’s Pink Pound rosé: the Speedo-clad cherub with a singlet tan on the bottle is nearly as intriguing as what’s inside. patricksullivan.com.au

Artisan finds in Chile

Adventurous importers Lucy Kendall and Alice L’Estrange of Cultivar Fine Wines have travelled through the old wine-growing corners of Chile and brought back treasure: aromatic whites and fresh reds, rustic and honest, produced on a tiny scale and, until recently, destined for local consumption. The star style is pipeño, a light, highly quaffable red made from the old país grape, grown in 250-year-old vineyards and fermented in large barrels made from local raulí, a native Chilean beech. cultivarwines.com.au

Message on a bottle

While circling over Seoul two years ago, Danish winemaker Anders Frederik Steen was horrified to see “islands” of plastic rubbish in the ocean below. He decided to print “Don’t throw plastic in the ocean, please” in 12 languages on the labels of two wines he was making with fellow natural winemaker Jean-Marc Brignot for Foxy Foxy Nature Wildlife wines. “When the bottle is placed on the table, people start to talk about these things,” says Steen. hostwineimports.com.au

Turkish delight

As we applaud the spread of vibrant, new-wave Turkish cooking in Australia (we’re looking at you Stanbuli and Babajan), we’re pleased to see brilliant Turkish bottles being shipped here by new importers such as Tan Sümer of Opal Wine Merchants. Wines range from savoury dry whites and rosés made from ancient local grape varieties such as kalecik karasi to plush modern reds made from international varieties such as merlot and shiraz. opalwines.com.au

In the cup

You’ve custom-roasted your beans sourced from origin? Check. Hooked up your fancy coffee

machine? Check. Now the only thing standing between you and opening the doors on your café du jour are the cups by Acme & Co (no relation to the Sydney design studio of the same name). Jeff Kennedy, the godfather of New Zealand espresso, designed them from scratch to tick all the boxes that he never managed to find elsewhere all in one cup. He must’ve done something right because now they’re favoured by coffee diehards the world over, and Australia has by no means been immune to their normcore charm. What’s the hook? “Special coffee deserves special cups,” says Dominick Majdandzic, co-owner of White Horse Coffee, a local distributor of the brand, “and nothing says special more than Acme & Co.” acmecups.com

The alchemist

There’s no menu but there is house-made Campari prepared à la minute before your very eyes with angelica root, cochineal, tonka beans and other arcane ingredients scooped from apothecary jars. It’s all part of the magic of the bar Ben Fiddich in Shinjuku, where bartender Hiroyasu Kayama deploys the mortar and pestle as much as he does the shaker tin to craft memorable cocktails. Soon you’ll be able to pull up a stool at Kayama-san’s second bar, slated to open in 2017 in the same building. Ben Fiddich, 9F, 1-13-7 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo.

Bottling out

Bored with the 750ml bottle, some winemakers have opted for retro alternatives. Stuart Proud, of Proud Primary Produce in the Yarra Valley, and Jordy Kay of Chèvre, now in the Otway Ranges, both favour the flagon for their fresh whites and very light reds, while Dudley Brown of Inkwell in McLaren Vale chose the humble can for his off-dry, extended skin-contact sparkling viognier. Very retro – Sydney wine merchant Doug Lamb was selling Beaujolais Hiroyasu Kayama in cans in the 1960s.

High tea

Japan’s Royal Blue Tea takes loose leaf to the next level with its mizudashi method. Tea leaves are steeped for up to a week, creating highly clarified flavours. While the approach resembles cold brew, the teas are bottled and served like wine at select top restaurants in Asia. Try the company’s Hana bottling at Tokyo restaurant Den – it’s the purest jasmine tea you’ll ever drink. royalbluetea.com

Roll out the barrel

Where once brewers would proudly show off their stainless-steel tanks, now they can’t wait to take you into the barrel room and geek out over row upon row of ex-whisky casks and ex-sherry casks and ex-god-knows-what casks containing slowly maturing beer. Melbourne’s Boatrocker Brewing Co is a leader in the field, producing an outstandingly complex range of drinks in what head brewer Matt Houghton reckons is the biggest beer barrel-ageing program in the southern hemisphere. boatrocker.com.au

_Image by Miguel Checa_

Tiki talkin’

The owls didn’t align last year when the débuts of both Twin Peaks‘ long-awaited third season and Sydney “dark tiki” bar Jacoby’s – named after Laura Palmer’s eccentric, tiki-loving psychiatrist – were delayed till later in 2017. A more intimate effort from the team behind Newtown speakeasy Earl’s Juke Joint, Jacoby’s will feature reboots of tiki cocktails, a tight list long on pink and orange wines, and a quirky Tropicália-meets-Lynch vibe. 154 Enmore Rd, Sydney, NSW

The great Aussie claret comeback

Two super-premium wines launched this month hark back to the days of Aussie “claret”, a medium-bodied, firm-finish cabernet blend. The 2013 Vasse Felix “Tom Cullity” ($160), an elegant assemblage of Margaret River cabernet, malbec and petit verdot, is named after the estate’s founder, the first person to plant a commercial vineyard in the region, 50 years ago. And the 2012 Yalumba “The Caley” ($350), named after a scion of the winery’s founding family, is a fine, cellarworthy blend of cabernet and shiraz from Coonawarra and the Barossa. vassefelix.com.au; yalumba.com 

Pictured: Yalumba’s “The Caley”

London laugh inn

Melbourne somm Charlie Mellor has brought a dash of Australian wine-bar style to London. The Laughing Heart, his late-night wine bar, restaurant and bottle shop in East London, was unashamedly inspired by the likes of 10 William St, Embla and Ester. Named for a Charles Bukowski poem, it has a 300-deep organic and biodynamic wine list and a menu that spans “kitsch French, regional Italian, and pared-back Asian” dishes, says Mellor. Rock oysters with a natural-wine granita to start, followed by cod roe with furikake and crudités, and Dexter beef rib and Serragghia capers? Now you’re laughin’. thelaughingheartlondon.com

Keep your gin up

Another day, another gin. Okay, so perhaps not quite that many new brands of gin have crossed our tasting bench this year – but it does feel that way. And by far the most interesting are those incorporating indigenous ingredients: Something Wild’s super-punchy Australian Green Ant Gin, for instance, featuring, yes, green ants from the Northern Territory among the botanicals; or the complex and perfumed Brookie’s Gin, featuring herbs and plants foraged from the Byron Bay hinterland. adelaidehillsdistillery.com.au

Vonnegut-inspired cocktails

He was a hero of the 1960s counterculture, celebrated for his subversive yet optimistic fiction. It’s a decade since legendary novelist Kurt Vonnegut died, and in his birthplace of Indianapolis they’re marking the occasion with a year of events and the opening of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. Fans can make a pilgrimage to landmarks such as the massive Vonnegut mural overlooking one of Indy’s hip cultural districts, and dine at Bluebeard, named after his 1987 novel. Thirsty for more? Eleven city bars have created Vonnegut-inspired cocktails full of references to dark characters and Vonnegutian plots. vonnegutlibrary.org