CEBU, Philippines - It was a mutual undertaking by Shangri-La's Mactan Resort and Spa and the Wine Warehouse to launch an evening of food and wine pairing featuring the elegant wines from Grant Burge's Winery (http://www.grantburgewines.com.au/) of Barbarossa Valley, South Australia.
The world of wines is not an easy subject to comprehend for Filipinos because our culture is more familiar with beer, rum, gin, and the local brew - palm wine or simply "tuba." We can grow grapes for eating but the grapes for wine production grows best in the temperate zone, 30 to 50 degrees latitude in the North and 30 to 40 degrees latitude in the South. And the Philippines, being near the equator, is right at the center of both these locations.
Your favorite food reviewer's first acquaintance with wine was when he was an altar boy assisting the priest in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and there was always a tablespoon or two left in the bottle of altar wine. Much later, it was "tuba," freshly extracted from the coconut tree (minus the extract from the "tungog" tree) was my fascination, until I saw all the insects and sometimes a lizard, excuse me, inside the bamboo container used to gather the coconut sap. So I moved on to beer, and then in college it was gin because budget was very tight. Gin "bilog," plenty of ice, and a dash of lemoncito and life in U. P. Diliman became bearable. Filipinos, it is said, consume more gin than the Britons.
Back in January 2003, I wrote a four part series of "Wine Here, Beer There and Distilled Spirits Everywhere," where I said that "more Cebuanos have taken to… drinking wine!" and wines were available in many groceries and convenience stores, and there were many varieties of wine to choose from. In Australia, James Halliday has reviewed over 2,500 wineries and his Wine Companion Book has over 70,000 wine reviews. There are just so many wines to taste that at the rate of one vineyard a day, it will take you nearly seven years to complete your task for all these Australian wineries.
Back to the Evening of Sumptuous Cuisine and Grant Burge Wines, there were six award-winning wines and the food suggestions for pairing are listed below: (FREEMAN)