The good life

We spent this past weekend indulging in pure hedonism. With another couple and their 6 month old baby boy, we stayed in an enormous, luxuriously appointed house, so that we could go to a dinner held by one of our favourite wineries in the Hunter Valley.

Macquariedale is a biodynamic winery, and the dinner was made of organic, locally grown produce (as far as possible - whatever that means). It was divine. The entree in particular was very special - snapper with fennel in parcels. Just awesome.

The wine was, as expected, all good. The speaker was Max Allen, a wine writer and biodynamic convert. I don't know that I am entirely convinced by some of the biodynamic principles, but since it is grounded in sustainability, I am not dissing it. Besides, the wine tastes great. I can be disgustingly self indulgent and smugly superior about helping the environment at the same time.

We went to a couple of wineries, but we basically chilled out and hung around in the house. Griffin, the 6 month old, is very high on the adorable scale, and of course we rather like his parents too. :)

And for the essential Charlie story of the weekend - Ben came in this morning in full on dibber dobber mode, saying "Charlie's not having an apple, he's having chocolate." So I drag my butt out of bed into the lounge room to find Charlie with a family block of dark chocolate, wrapper folded down, chomping his way though it. He looked at me with the indignation of the falsely accused when I took it from him.