Scott

that's AUD$

Claude, I never new about the low density plantings in CDP - thanks!

Broadly speaking, yes I think so. Not sure about that. How do you measure "industrial"? Presumably it is how many hl/ha they get. I would have thought Bgy is generally higher than Bdx due to the needs to try and make a living off smaller amounts of land. I would be very interested to know if anyone has any figures to compare. As for the question about the best wine in the world, I think that this is unanswerable. It comes down to a question of what is wine supposed to taste like? Hl/Ha - no i don't think this has anything to do with the analogy whatsoever. age of vines, soil, climate, vintage conditions, variety will all impact yields.

Broadly speaking, yes I think so.

Some producers make a lot less than that. Roumiers' Musigny is good for about 30 cases total. Dugat-py Chambertin - not much more. Mouton Rothschild can be up to 27,000 cases...

Craig, referring back to your original post, I think it almost disingenous to compare the fortunes of Burgundy & Bordeaux and to try and draw parallels to other trends in the wine industry today. I agree your facts, not your conclusions though. Yes Burgundy is going from strength to strength, and Bordeaux is waning at present, but if we consider just a couple of basic points: Bordeaux: production often exceeds 20,000 cases Burgundy: production often below 500 cases Bordeaux: Prices offensively speculative & opportunistic Burgundy: Prices generally consistent. My point being that Bordeaux is a speculative industry winning friends & enemies depending on prices, vintage and relative availability of stocks. Burgundy behaves much more consistently and given the vintage quality we have seen since about 1994 it behave much more like a classical luxury product. One gains directly from the other as a result of decisions made by the other - I don't think we can parallel that outside this peculiar axis. I firmly believe the upper echelons of the world's great wines are still largely french majority. In many cases the greatest examples of a given grape variety are french, native examples excluded of course. my 2 cents as they say

Simon, bit carried away here, hmmm...? Shane Osborn & David Thompson spring to mind.

Perhaps you could get them to do something about their 'common rooms'

well said - i agree entirely Durack was a dubious reviewer in Sydney previously, and no more reliable than now. I do think that in most cases, the era of the critic who believes he/she is the show is pretty much over - but there are exceptions...

I think we assign too much credit/assign too much responsibility to critics. Inevitably readers see far too much science in what is often is an uncurated collection of sporadic thoughts. Maybe Jay can confirm/deny. In another field I was once worked as a professional critic, and you have deadlines, sub editors demanding copy, a new gig most nights etc etc you often end up writing whatever springs to mind 40 minutes before submission. go, I read a review of Sonny's in Barnes a couple of weeks ago from Terry Durack, who ranted like a madman because they served Caesar salad as a side dish. Somehow he thought this was more important, that anything else and dominated his story. Now this was a terrible quality critique because he invested too much of himself and not enough of the restaurant in his notice - bet he wrote at the last minute! anyway, I wonder if Fay has not put as much science into her review as some may like to read into it. I doubt it's much more than that - though i could be wrong

Sheekey is great. But I would still never go on a sunday, unless I was in the mood for fish pie. If the fisherman don't fish on a sunday - it ain't fresh.

Tony, I just don't agree that it's the customers job to be aware of this sort of thing - service is confusing for many people anyway. It's this confusion that many less scrupulous operators pray upon. I don't think people know to look for it either.

There is only 1 problem labelling white burgundy 'Chardonnay', it ignores the unspoken tracts of Pinot Blanc that occupies many vineyards. To illustrate the point, Dominique Laurent released his top white (not that it's much good), La Forge Meursault 1998, with a release stating it to be 100% pinot blanc. Might throw a spanner in the works??

It was a little on the disappointing side. Not as jammy as I had hoped with an herbaceous overtone that a didn't care for. It wasn't bad, but the other bottle was much better. That bottle was a ZD Pinot Noir 2000. I'd never had thought it was good, but at a wine dinner, someone opened it as a bonus wine and it was delicious. More RRV tasting even though it was a Carneros wine. So I picked up a few bottles. I had dinner at Zemi, my favorite restaurant in Boca Raton, Florida. Unfortuntately, that food was only average, usually it's superlative. I had grouper over crispy spinach with shrimp risotto but the grouper was surprisingly drab (and I LOVE grouper). They did have a fabulous shrimp cocktail made up of great U10 monsters. The fox creek isn't jammy enough for you?? Jammy is not a good character for Mclaren Vale Shiraz. Nonetheless the Fox Creek wines are so ridiculously overripe, I wonder what you thought you needed more of? Fruit, tannin, extraction, less tartartic, maybe even more time in a centrifugal concentration machine. The 1998 Oz red's are probably not ready yet, but it depends on what you want. if you want lot's of fruit and oak while it still has good grip then they are probably ready to go - if you like them slightly more mellow give them another 2-3 years. I would caution against waiting if you like them now, you may not like them in 5 years. As for the original question: 7 acre shiraz Jim Barry Armagh Georgia's paddock None of these wines are very good match's with food though - most Australian wines aren't, they lack acidity and have too much pronounced oak.

Pure evil, that prays on the unsuspecting and the too trusting.

RSJ, then walka round in circles along the river bank

Tony, I mostly agree with you. If you want a table at 1:15 and there isn't one - when do you expect to be seated????? 12:30 is what they have = what they have. There isn't any reason to argue that point is there? if they are full, and they must be close, they don't have a table for a party that sits down at 12:50. As for a table at 8:30 - well things can't be as good as they used to be it can only be a good thing, that you can have the table the whole time. As for £200 that's just bullying you into thinking you don't have a choice, similar in nature to a service charge, the legalities are very different to the niceties. If you have entered into a contract, that you intended to be bound by (!), then perhaps they could charge something - certainly not a median bill that suits them. You would struggle to argue successfully that you intended to enter a binding contract at GR's, especially since it is industry standard to have no shows. If you rang your card service provider and declined to honour the charge GR would struggle to have the charge upheld - IMO.

Basildog, your breads do look well sexy.

Andy, you can only really justify a visit to the crescent if you have vino on your mind.

what's the fuss? 2 sittings is the work of the devil as correctly ascribed by other members. staggering is what EVERY decent restaurant on planet earth does. Forget the seating, do you think the kitchen can knock out 40 covers simultaneously???? you are allotted seating time, service, and kitchen time. Some make this more formulaic than others, and GR thinks it's a PR winner (maybe it is). But perhaps another way of looking at it is, 'what if they didn't stagger'? - those experiences you post about on here: how your mains took an hour, & no one took your order. Your mains didn't take an hour, you feel out of the queue...

don't you like your windows?

Vanessa, insane? clearly you have never had a great belini! I think the man is clearly discerning and infinitely sensible. This degree of forward thinking ensures that man need no longer tolerate peach schnapps poured into a dodgy coup of NV champagne. Bravo this paragon of sophistication! A bad bellini is a terrible, terrible waste...

Do anyone of you guys know about the late evening special at Le Gav? it's great, but you must sit at 10:00pm or later - fine depending on what you have already been doing. It's not advertised too much, but it's similar to the lunch deal. 2 courses - any dish of the regular Ala Carte glass of wine with each course Coffee + petit fours all your water £50 per person The best part is that it's any dish of the carte - last time I had scallops & lobster. Even when dining normally there, i can never manage any more than starter & main - just too full for desert!

just browsing, i thought i'd weigh in with a little bit of view. a few weeks ago i was recommended a few places for a special weekend, and I did my best to get about! my thoughts were: Le Bernadin: really disappointed. The room is cavernous and overly corporate, and it didn't help that ours wasn't the best table - but on short notice can't complain. Service was poor all night - amuse came out before we could even order wine, and then it was 40 minutes before we saw anyone again. Food: Amuse of yellow tuna tartare - fine, perhaps a little underseasoned. Fluke Cerviche - series of 4 marinated fluke dishes. quite successful, though the kitchen describes them as becoming 'more complex' but delving heavily into green and red curry thai styled combo's was not awe inspiring. Nice dish though. Argentinean Scallop ravioli, in foie & truffle sauce. pointless dish, the type I hate - lemme explain. The shrimp was fine, cooked well - still a little crisp. The pasta was toothy, so they worked well, albeit fractionally dull on their own. The sauce, this type of cooking i find pointless. It's just rich & indulgent, rather than well matched - the ingredients are the wow factor, not the end product. 'look honey, bits of black truffle, and ooh isn't that sauce a pretty colour' - didn't work, and as it was recommended by our vanishing waiter, I wasn't pleased. (the dish is prob better than I described, but I still think a pointless combo) Steamed Striped Bass - paying less attention now. This I enjoyed, nice fragrant broth permeating the almost translucent flesh. Tasty, well cooked, but fractionally dull. It was too wet - needed a crunch or something. was good though. desert - some unremarkable passionfruit, sorbeting thing. This was not inexpensive, and the food was mostly fine, 1 piece of my cerviche was exceptional. My GF's food was no better. I found the place good overall, just not good enough. Too corporate a dining room, and poor service - they were only at 80% cover most of the time also. $9 for a bottle pellegrino - the worst deal since I got charged £7 for an espresso at MPW's Oak Room. the worst part is now I won't give proper time to those places that were great. Bouley: V.Day - stunning. complaints first off: had made pre-dining arrangements, these were forgotten. Was not informed of a special Valentine menu, alacarte not available. The V menu was exceptional though. Was overcharged for dodgy house champagne. These are relatively minor compared to the historic food served. The red room, each with its own deco lamp, roses petals strewn over the table - very romantic. Service good, although it was hard to know who our waiter was for the evening. GF runs a large city restaurant, and she gets very peeved over that sort of thing. Food: 7 courses - although don't recall all of them. Gravadlax in a yogurt/herby emulsion - delicious, real melt in your mouth stuff. With a mini taco that was a tasty as anything I have ever put in my mouth - seriously. Black Bass in a scallop crust, with sauce Bouillabaisse and vanilla rice. the rice was unnecessary, the sauce was nice, but was just a heavily reduced fish stock/sauce. Now the fish was everything the bass at Le-B wasn't. The scallop crust was inventive and technically precise, the bass was moist, flavoursome and just a devasting combination. Potato cloud with Ny state Foie & Truffle - this was textural perfection. Complex flavours, very well balanced. It is a veloute with an electric beater rammed through it - very gordon ramsay. great. Geez my memory is going, I had a very good red venison dish the details escape me. Lobster dish - very good. Deserts not the strongest but very good. Lots of sorbets & chocolate in 2 different dishes. Anyway you get the point. 11 madison park avenue - much simpler food, more comforting but accomplished. The room, jesus the room is beautiful. A short note, had some of the best Mexican food ever at Mexicana Mama, in the village. The sort of stuff you can't get in London. Our guests were impressed, just not as surprised as the non New-Yorkers were. so there you have it, I don't have the benefit of trying over time as I have certainly found that to be all important. Bouley was truly great, though i hear they can be variable - no point in being 1 out 3 of similar. Bernadin - groan... i would say this, doesn't everyone rank pirvately in their heads anyway?

Guys, I was boozing a few days ago with a very highly regarded chef, and former member of Gordon Ramsay's staff (Aubergine), who opined some interesting thoughts. Now these views were just of a personal nature, and not intended to an all encompassing sweeping statement. Anyway, the suggestion was that Gordon at RHR would not have 3 stars if he was in France, instead of star bereft Britain. I don't know if I agree, but I found it a refreshingly candid view. I certainly feel Wareing is, and has been for some time, in charge of the superior kitchen. What do you lot think?