One morning in August last year I woke up remembering a fabulous dream I’d had. At the time I was in Campania in Italy in the land of seriously wonderful things like fresh seafood, buffalo mozzarella and prosciutto, not to mention wines made from varieties such as Greco, Fiano, Falanghina and Aglianico – all the good stuff! It was just before I was starting in vintage in Sicily so I was pretty excited about Italy, wine, and life in general. In the dream Kim and I were given free reins on an inner city bar in Melbourne. It was a full Chalmers take over for a good time, not a long time. The dream was short, sweet and simple yet it brought a lot of happiness.
Later the next morning, a text message along the lines of… “Hi Tennille, Rebecca here from Cohen Cellars in East Melbourne, I’ve got a random proposal for you…. Wondering if Chalmers want to do a Pop-Up at my bar for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. Make some #bucketwine for it, you guys come along and we’ll serve them together with some Chalmers wine. Think of it like a Chalmers takeover. Let me know what you think.” I simply replied ‘Yes!”
Crazy! What are the chances?
With our keen reaction, Rebecca quickly locked in the event.
Since then the awesome Alquimie magazine has written #bucketwine Bonanza up as one of the top 4 wine experiences of the 2015 #MFWF. Amazing.
Now here we are in March with the 2015 Melbourne Food and Wine Festival well underway and our event #bucketwine Bonanza is just around the corner. We took the initial idea back to just a one day event as time is poor in the middle of vintage, and this Thursday 12th March, we’ll drive down to Melbourne with a car boot full to the brim with some very exciting little #bucketwines on board.
This event has given us the opportunity to continue making super small batch, fun wines in the search for a great new blend, variety or wine style for people to try, and hopefully love. Without giving too many secrets away, we’ve made a NE Italy meets NW Italy co-fermented white blend which we think is a cracker; a white variety which has been around for a while but not many people have gotten on board with yet; a rosato from one of our favourite varieties to make rose from; a ‘nuovo’ or ‘new wine’ red from a Southern Italian classic; we’ll take a look at some of last years super rare variety #bucketwine reds, and a whole heap more. You will have to join us at the event to find out what they are, taste the wines, chew the fat and pick your favourite!
Thanks to Rebecca and Cohen Cellars for inviting us to be a part of the MFWF and her great little wine bar, and to everyone else, we hope to see you there!
Who knows, there might even be another one of our #winthebooze competitions.
Hope to see you all there…
Ciao,
Tennille
