NSW Wine Festival 2012

On Saturday night, Gill and I went to the Belvoir Street Theatre in Surry Hills to see 'Babyteeth', billed as "a mad, gorgeous, bittersweet comedy about how good it is not to be dead yet."


 It's a rather confronting play about a teenage girl with terminal cancer and how those close to her deal with it; her neurotic mother, who needs a cocktail of pills to keep her sane, her junkie friend, and her psychiatrist father who provides them all with drugs. Then there's her crazed Latvian violin teacher and the heavily pregnant girl next door. The set consists of rooms in a house on a rotating circular stage, divided in to three rooms of a family home. The play opens - and closes - in the kitchen, the morning they realise their daughter has died during the night. The final sequence is rich in pathos, as the opening scene is repeated, whilst the set rotates quickly and the actors move between the rooms to music. The intimate venue of the Belvoir is designed to challenge and to bring discomfort to the viewer; in this play it successfully enhances the audience's voyeurism in to the family home. It had some very funny moments and was supremely well acted; the complex characters and their dialogue were strikingly real. 


On Sunday, we went to the annual NSW Wine Festival in Hyde Park with Gill's parents. Long time readers of the blog may remember my post exactly a year ago after the 2011 festival when Pete, Meg and Paddy came along; click here to view the post from last year's baby-free (?) event.

The wineries were divided in to regions and we thought we'd try areas we didn't know so well, including Canberra (which is not in NSW, of course, though the wineries are in the Canberra region, which is). We weren't particularly impressed with them, nor with the Riverina options; there were some familiar names from Mudgee, The Hunter Valley and Orange, and the latter proved to be a winner. One of our favourite Australian wineries, Ross Hill, had the pick of the reds (even without their awesome Cabernet Franc with them). 


The find of the day was Westend Estate Wines from Griffith, who had some of the best value reds; at $15 a bottle they were too good to ignore.

Gill attempts to patronise her mother

Most of the wineries brought a limited selection of their wines, so some of the more expensive ranges didn't make the trip. Angullong from Orange, which we'd not been to before, was also a winner (photo above) - their Italian styles were excellent, the pick of which was their Barbera.

I lost all credibility when I failed to realise that my hat was on backwards

Fortunately the festival finished at 6pm (shortly after the hat incident) so the wine tasting had to come to an end. Gill and I then pushed on to the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia in Rushcutters Bay for a beer with Angelique, who had spent the day fixing up one of the boats she sails on, before heading to a couple of pubs and dinner in Paddington.

All of which made for a rather difficult Monday morning....