A No Horse Town

Yarck is somewhere here. Somewhere.


Yarck isn't a one horse town; the horse left in fear of being sexually molested. I'm not sure what the population of Yarck is, but I'm pretty sure that the horse leaving had a major impact on the census.

Yarck is a dot on a map, the sort of place you wouldn't know about unless you lived there; I've driven through it numerous times and never even noticed it. It's situated somewhere in the middle of Central Victoria and is nothing more than a couple of run down shopfronts and a gas station. I could say that the dirt doesn't even hang around very long, but you get the idea.

With this in mind it must have been either charity, insanity, or both, that made the owners of upmarket South Yarra eatery Da noi open The Tea Rooms of Yarck there. Either way, The Tea Rooms are pretty good, even if they don't serve tea. It's a place where you don't order, you just eat and try and keep up as a constant plethora of Sardinian delicacies are bought out. What I like about TRoY, apart from the name that Trading Standards might get irked over, is that although their food is proudly Italian, their wine list is distinctly local, with the majority of the list being made up of nearby Central Victorian examples. Victoria has more quality boutique wineries than it knows what to do with and produces some stunning and diverse wines, and local restaurants should be ensuring that they do their best to stock them.

Well a big cyber high-five to the TRoY, which stocks the Lost Valley Wines 2007 Cortese which is, as far as I'm aware, the only example of Australian Cortese available. To those that don't know, or are too lazy to look, Cortese is the grape behind one of Italy's renowned Cortese di Gavi from the Piedmont region. For that reason alone the Lost Valley version is worth checking out. Parker likes it a lot, and rightly so. Although the citrus and green fruit aren't overly obvious, it has a great weight and texture, and a level of acidity that make it great with food. Some nice spice on the finish and overall it's delicious and different.

That's it for now, be seeing you.