Huntington Estate celebrate wine and music
Huon Hooke in Winery Spotlights Become a member to view this article
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Huntington Estate’s Tim and Nicky Stevens. Huntington Estate Wines
Wine, food and music are perfect partners, which is why musical events are often staged at wineries. Huntington Estate’s owners Tim and Nicky Stevens hosted a memorable lunch-time concert recently at Sydney’s Bathers’ Pavilion.
Huntington Estate had hosted 30 great concert weekends at its Mudgee winery up until the COVID pandemic. There had been three attempts to stage a shortened event since then, all thwarted by circumstances. The catalyst for this event was the Stevens’ desire to farewell one of their favourite and most regular musical acts, the Goldner String Quartet, who officially retired last year. This remarkable string quartet consists of two married couples, who have been playing, touring and recording together for 30 years.
This year marks 20 years since Tim Stevens took over Huntington Estate from the Roberts family.Dene Olding is principal violinist, his wife Irina Morozova plays viola, Dimity Hall also plays violin and her husband Julian Smiles plays cello. They re-formed for the day with accordionist James Crabbe and a string bassist Andrew Meisel to make The Huntington Sextet, with the single aim of performing a new piece, Bubble & Squeak, by a favourite local composer, Holly Harrison.
Dene Olding introduced the (quite short) piece and mentioned that a certain famous composer said that if you applauded long enough they would repeat the performance, and that is exactly what happened!
Bathers’ Pavilion has a second kitchen to cater for the upstairs room. It produced a superb meal, the highlight being steamed baby snapper with a scallop mousse and the most amazing beurre blanc-like sauce incorporating fennel and chardonnay. The two whites served with it were also excellent and well chosen to accompany the dish: 2018 Huntington Estate Special Reserve Semillon and 2022 Huntington Estate Barrel Fermented Chardonnay. The chardonnay is still available, for AUD $35 ex-winery.
A beef cheek main course with spinach and red-wine sauce was matched with 2021 Grand Reserve Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon and 2018 Special Reserve Shiraz, both trophy winners and available at AUD $54 and $100 respectively. As good as these were, a glass of the trophy-winning Special Reserve Grenache 2023 (remarkably, still available at AUD $54) stole the spotlight.
This year marks 20 years since Tim Stevens took over Huntington Estate from the Roberts family, and Stevens, never lost for words, embarked on an abbreviated run-down of the 20 vintages.
2020 – bushfires. Entire crop lost.
2019 – mouse plague (Nicky threatened to go back to England).
2006 – “the only vintage I’ve had that could be described as normal”.
2010 – hot and dry.
2011 and 12 – cold and wet.
2013-20 – really hot, and drier and drier.
2021-23 – cold and wet.
2023 – “The best vintage we’ve ever seen at Huntington Estate”. It produced the grenache that beat all the South Australian grenaches to win the trophy at the Sydney wine show.
Then there were the vintages memorable for Stevens family events.
2011 – Son Freddy was born. “A great vintage for us”.
2013 – While climbing onto a fermenter, he fell 4 metres off a ladder that had not been properly secured. “It should have killed me.”
2015 – Son Charlie was born.
1955 – “My year. Alas, no vintage port was declared in Portugal.”
*NB. For more complete (and more helpful!) details of Huntington vintages, refer to the website.