Mayfair Lane – Meet the Winemaker: Bert Salomon

When you have the chance to mingle with a winemaker or passionate wine industry person – do it! Recently the lovely Foni invited me down to Mayfair Lane in West Perth to their Meet the Winemaker event with Bert Salomon. Bert owns and manages Salomon Undhof in Austria and Salomon Estate in South Australia (Finniss River).

The event took place on a Thursday night from about 6-8pm. We were wined, dined and had the chance to talk one on one with Bert alongside hearing his interesting story of how he came to be a part of the wine industry. I had a fabulous night and wanted to share this with you guys as I am sure there’ll be more wine events like this coming up at Mayfair.

Bert Undhof

I absolutely loved hearing Bert’s story! For someone who undertakes harvest twice a year, he deserves a bit of kudos.

Bert and wife Gertrude headed to South Australia where they started Salomon Estate after falling in love with the area more than 20 years ago now. Prior to devoting her efforts to their wine adventures, Gertrude worked in the management at L´Oréal for many years. After establishing their Finniss River vineyard Bert then found out he was to inherit his family’s Austrian vineyard from his father, Fritz. So long story short, Bert & Gertrude’s time is divided between the 2 vineyards which will be handed onto his children.

The Salomon family have been making wine for over 225 years so it’s safe to say they’re a pretty well-known name. The Austrian winery is situated in Wachau which is a cultural world heritage site – it sounds and looks absolutely amazing. The vineyards are all terraced which is such a fantastic thing to see at some point if you can, I experienced terraced vineyard when we were travelling through the wine region of Lavaux in Switzerland.

After checking out the Salomon Wines website, I see the Salomon brand also stretches to New Zealand.

The Wines

We tried wines from both his Austrian Vineyard (2013 Grüner Veltliner, 2013 & 2012 Rieslings) and his Aussie vineyard (2012 Cab Sauv, 2009 GSM and the 2009 Alttus Shiraz). The retail prices for these wines range from $33-99 and on the night we were able to buy them at prices from $28-80. Some great deals!

It’s safe to say between the wine and food (not to mention the experience of meeting Bert) was well worth the $60 ticket. My friend who came along with me thought it was $60 well spent.

As mentioned when I recently blogged about lunch at Mayfair Lane – I love that they use quality glassware (Riedel) it just makes the tasting and wine drinking experience so much better!

What I really enjoyed about this event was that while Bert was talking the Mayfair staff were continuously topping us up so we could enjoy each wine alongside Bert as he explained them.

Unfortunately I didn’t write tasting notes, I’d need more hands to do that! However I thoroughly enjoyed the wines – the Grüner and 2012 Riesling were definite favourites.

The Food

The nibbles we had to dine on throughout the evening were nothing short of exceptional! Gosh I love their food and these little bites to eat went down well!

I loved the little ‘chefs gazpacho’ bottles – not only were they über cute but they were nice and spicy which is right up my alley!

This was the menu for tonight and some snaps of the ones I remembered to take a pic of before gobbling up very quickly:

The Setting

I love the interior design of Mayfair Lane – it’s simply gorgeous! Their were about 20 people at the tasting so it was nice and intimate. We were in the back dining room so the noise of the pub and restaurant didn’t interrupt our experience.
I’m going to say the same thing I said in my first post about Mayfair – it’s those little touches that makes this venue stand out for me. From the little cork name cards to the Austrian inspired fresh flower vases on the tables.

A big thanks to Foni and Chris for inviting me along – I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and would definitely recommend heading to an event at Mayfair Lane. I also have to mention that Foni is a crazy wine oenophile like myself. She has a ton of knowledge on the world of wine (she is qualified to teach the WSET courses) and absolutely loves chatting all things wine!

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