Story & photos by Dr. Michael Lim The Travelling GourmetTM

All rights reserved

The indefatigable & inspiring Travelling Gourmet learns all about Recorking and Recertifying Penfolds‘ wines in St. Regis Hotel Singapore…where

MR Peter Gago, my good friend and chipper Chief Winemaker of Penfolds waxed lyrical about Penfolds COMPLIMENTARY Red Wine Clinic. Here, Penfolds afficionados can bring their wines of 15 years or older for assessment and recorking plus recertification by experts. On Thursady, 9 May 12013, Penfolds carried out its 2nd Clinic in Singapore.

I believe in what Socrates, the famous Greek Philosopher always expounded: The only true wisdom is when we realise we know…nothing. I learned so much including the double corkscrew technique to remove old and crumbly corks, wine oscillation in the bottle due to temperature fluctuations from incorrect cellaring and much MORE! I found out too that Peter is a “Geordie” born in Newcastle upon the River Tyne. I was at the University there…but that is another story.

Penfolds do not make good wines…Penfolds make GREAT wines! Wines from the New World that can put some Old World wines to shame. If the Penfolds Grange were a woman, it would be Lola Montez. Voluptuous, extremely colourful, sometimes wild, curvaceous and never boring. Loved by many.  Lola Montez, who the Germans would describe as having…”grosse Augen”. Dangerous too, if you knew her too well. Wine if drunk in excess is dangerous too, to your health…A wine to grow hairs on your chest and maybe elsewhere…Ha! Ha!

Something on

Lola, Lola, Oh Madonna…

Born Eliza Rosanna Gilbert (1821-1861) in County Sligo, Ireland, Lola was a wild child sent from school to school until she eloped with a young officer at the age of sixteen. Lola wanted his money as he had come into an inheritance. Alas, it was a disastrous match and Lola soon fled Calcutta and reinvented herself as a Spanish dancer, debuting in London in 1843. Scandal after torrid scandal followed Lola around Europe as she added various great men to her list of conquests, including Franz Liszt and Ludwig I, the king of Bavaria, who made her the Countess of Landsfeld to the anger of his people, and Alexandre “Count of Monte Cristo” Dumas and more…She was, legend has it, the inspiration for Sir Arthur “Sherlock Holmes” Doyle’s character Irene Adler in “A Scandal in Bohemia”. Luscious Lola was armed at all times with a pistol and a riding whip and would whip her lovers until they fled in terror if they did not perform…to her satisfaction. The femme fatale to judge all other femme fatales by…

To be continued…