Your weekly taste of Australia’s best food, drinks and spirited discoveries
Welcome back to Uncorked & Forked.
Spring has arrived, so this week we’re heading for the country where Queensland is putting on one hell of a show.
There are millions of flowers in Toowoomba, chilli and camp ovens firing up, avocados being thrown for sport, a rapidly evolving food scene and some seriously good wine coming out of the Granite Belt.
Elsewhere, we’re pouring a beautiful Grampians Syrah, challenging the rules of food and wine matching in Coonawarra, and visiting a Local Legend in a place called Tarrawingee.
Speaking of pubs, we’ve even found a new cookbook devoted entirely to pub grub.
Road trip, anyone?
Spring has arrived in Queensland Country, and the flowers may have some competition.
Over the next couple of months, the country west and south of Brisbane will be firing up camp ovens, throwing avocados, pouring Granite Belt wines, celebrating chilli, picking strawberries and even painting four enormous grain silos.
In other words, this might be a very good time for a road trip.
The headline act is the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers, returning from September 18 to October 5 for its 77th year. More than 80 events and experiences are spread across three weekends, including the Grand Central Floral Parade, FEASTival, #trEATS, Twilight Tours and the four-day Weekend Table.
But wander beyond the gardens and things become considerably more Uncorked & Forked.
On September 12, the South Burnett town of Blackbutt holds its annual Avocado Festival.
There are markets and entertainment, but we’re primarily interested in the competitive avocado rolling, tossing and juggling — followed by the Avo Drop, when skydivers descend into the festival.
A week later, things get hotter.
The Murphys Creek Chilli, Craft & Cake Carnival on September 20 brings together more than 60 chilli-themed vendors and food trucks, hundreds of sauces, eating challenges, cakes and crafts.
Then on October 3–4, Millmerran hosts the Australian Camp Oven Festival, Australia’s largest celebration of camp-oven cooking. Expect cooking competitions, heritage displays, workshops, damper throwing and enough food cooked over coals to make you reconsider whatever you’d planned for dinner.
There’s plenty happening between festivals.
Danny Patisserie is playing with flavours including matcha lemon and rose lychee, while The Book Pour combines two things we hadn’t previously realised needed combining: an independent bookshop and a wine bar devoted exclusively to Granite Belt wines.
Then there’s Hachi Hachi Bar, a hidden Toowoomba laneway bar inspired by Japan’s tiny drinking dens, pouring sake, shochu, Japanese whisky, cocktails and highballs.
Flowers by day, Japanese whisky by night. We can work with that.
Keep driving south and you reach the Granite Belt, Queensland’s high-country wine region.
And it’s having quite a year.
Balancing Heart Vineyard was named Dark Horse Winery of the Year in the 2027 Halliday Wine Companion Awards — the first Queensland winery to win a major Halliday award — while Ballandean Estate’s 2023 Saperavi took Wildcard Red Wine of the Year.
Come November, Grazing the Granite Belt turns the region into a progressive food-and-wine weekend, with visitors moving between wineries and producers on November 7–8.
There’s also something rather intriguing happening at Ballandean. Mētēora Vineyard combines estate-grown wines with Mediterranean-inspired food and what is billed as Queensland’s first wine cave, carved more than 25 metres into a granite hillside.
That’s going straight onto our list.
The food and wine are only part of the trip.
On September 26–27, historic Jondaryan Woolshed goes old-school with shearing demonstrations, sheepdog trials, wagon rides and tea and damper.
October brings the Warwick Rodeo and Gold Cup Campdraft, one of the great traditions of Queensland country life.
And then, in the same region from October 23–25, Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra arrives for a weekend combining classical music, food and wine across the Southern Downs and Granite Belt.
One week you’re watching cowboys. The next you’re listening to Bach with a glass of local wine.
That’s quite a gear change.
From early October, four enormous GrainCorp silos at Forest Hill in the Lockyer Valley are expected to become the canvas for a major new public artwork.
Painting is expected to take around six weeks ahead of a November reveal, while a dedicated viewing precinct with parking, seating, landscaping and shade is being built alongside it.
At around an hour from Brisbane, it should eventually become one of South East Queensland’s easiest silo-art detours.
But there’s something appealing about visiting this spring and actually watching it take shape.
So yes, come for Toowoomba’s millions of flowers.
But perhaps leave a little room in the boot for wine, strawberries and avocados — and a little more room in the itinerary than you thought you’d need.
Because Queensland Country is putting on quite a show this spring.
This week’s red comes with a story — quite literally.
The Story Wines’ 2023 Grampians Syrah comes predominantly from 54-year-old vines at Westgate Vineyard near Great Western, with the remainder from Moyston Hills.
It was an unusually cool and late vintage, with the final Syrah grapes not coming off until Anzac Day and yields running at around one tonne to the acre.
Winemaker Rory Lane used natural fermentation, around 25 per cent whole bunches and predominantly older French oak. Only 520 dozen were produced.
What lands in the glass is very Grampians: fragrant, savoury and spicy rather than some enormous fruit bomb.
My Verdict: This is my sort of cool-climate Syrah. Peppery and savoury, with lovely dark fruit underneath and freshness running right through it. There’s plenty happening without the wine ever becoming heavy. A really classy Grampians red.
The Region: Grampians, Victoria
Best with: Lamb cutlets, roast beef or a good steak.
$38 cellar door.
Here’s a local whisky worth a look, particularly at its current price.
Sydney distiller Archie Rose makes its Australian Malt using Australian-grown barley and a blend of malt styles, creating a whisky that leans towards fruit, malt and spice rather than big smoke.
Dan Murphy’s currently has the 700ml bottle at $60 for My Dan’s members, down from $72.99.
My Verdict: Approachable Australian whisky at a very approachable price. Expect a malty sweetness, fruit and gentle spice rather than anything aggressively smoky. At $60, this is the bottle I’d be tempted to investigate this week.
The Region: Sydney, New South Wales
Best with: Neat, over one large cube of ice, or alongside a good hard cheese after dinner.
One Long Table | Chinchilla, Queensland | September 5
Chinchilla’s Heeney Street becomes one enormous multicultural dining room this Saturday for One Long Table.
Entry is free, with $10 meal tickets buying dishes from around the world. The menu stretches from German bratwurst and Thai food to Filipino and Korean flavours, American barbecue, smoked meats, baklava and mini pavlovas.
Add live entertainment and a 4pm start, and it’s a lovely example of a regional town using food to bring everyone to the same table.
Pours in the Port | Newcastle, NSW | September 5
Rather than putting all its producers inside one festival enclosure, Pours in the Port sends you wandering.
It’s a self-guided tasting trail through Newcastle’s Throsby district, with participating venues showcasing local beer, wine and spirits alongside food, live music and event-only specials.
Walk. Taste. Find the next venue. Repeat.
Just perhaps not indefinitely.
Murphys Creek Chilli, Craft & Cake Carnival | Murphys Creek, QLD | September 20
Spring has a new flavour around Toowoomba, and this one comes with a warning for the tastebuds.
More than 60 chilli-themed vendors and food trucks descend on Murphys Creek with hundreds of chilli sauces, fiery food, eating challenges, cakes and crafts.
It marks the beginning of chilli season and, rather neatly, the end of the chilly season.
Why we’d go: Chilli, cake and the prospect of watching somebody else discover they’ve wildly overestimated their heat tolerance.
There’s something reassuringly straightforward about a cookbook called Pub Grub.
George Darbyshire’s new collection contains 100 British pub favourites, designed to bring the sort of hearty cooking normally accompanied by a pint into the home kitchen.
Darbyshire grew up above his parents’ fish-and-chip shop before building a sizeable online following cooking British comfort food, so this isn’t someone suddenly discovering steak and ale pie because it photographs well.
The digital edition has just been released, with the Australian-listed hardback following in early October.
Why it’s on my radar: A whole cookbook devoted to proper pub food was probably always going to find its way into this column.
Some country pubs earn their place by knowing exactly what they’re supposed to be.
The Redesdale Hotel was tempting, but The Plough Inn at Tarrawingee gets my vote this week.
Sitting on the road between Wangaratta and Beechworth at the gateway to Victoria’s High Country, The Plough has been a country pub since 1861. Today it still revolves around the fundamentals: a front bar, bistro, beer garden and the simple business of getting people around a table.
The kitchen serves generous pub food built around seasonal High Country produce, while the bar makes a point of pouring local beers, wines and spirits from producers around the region.
In winter there are fires; when the weather behaves, there’s the beer garden. And its position between two of north-east Victoria’s great food-and-wine towns makes it a particularly handy place to stop.
No gimmick required.
Our take: A 165-year-old pub, local wine, regional produce and a seat by the fire. That’s pretty much the Local Legend brief.
Here’s a wine tasting that encourages you to disagree with the person pouring it.
At Ottelia in Coonawarra, the 3×3 tasting experience puts three wines alongside three snacks.
The difference is nobody dictates which goes with which. Instead, you taste every wine against every snack and decide which combinations work, and which most definitely don’t.
The $30 experience is deliberately designed to play with some of the conventional wisdom around food and wine matching.
It also seems an excellent way to discover how strongly three people can disagree about one piece of cheese.
Until next Friday… keep discovering, keep tasting and never drive past a country pub on an empty stomach.
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