Little things.
We don’t get back to Australia often. These images were from our last night in Sydney. We had dinner at a local Italian restaurant, I don’t recall the name. As we were walking through the side streets home we stumbled on a tiny bottle shop. Australia is dominated by huge chains, owned by either of the grocery giants, Coles and Woolworths. Aisles packed with discounted wines from generic mass producers. This place was independent, and a treasure of amazing, hard to get wines.
What caught my attention most was the selection of small bottles. Half bottles are slim pickings, and usually very generic. Not here; Barolo, Burgundy, and some very hard to get Australian wines all in the 375ml format. I spent forever choosing, in the end going with sentimentality opposed to adventure. Curly Flat is our favourite Australian Pinot Noir. It seemed fitting to drink a half bottle of Curly Flat on our last night in Australia.
Sometimes you just do not want a bottle of wine. It is true, you can drink half a bottle and revisit the wine the next day. Not an option if you fly out at 5.30am the next morning. On this night, with full stomachs and only having a few glasses with dinner, a half bottle is exactly what we needed.
There should be more half bottles. Just as there should be more Magnums. Why open two bottles of the same wine when Magnums exist? Why pretend we want half a bottle the next day when we could all be drinking half bottles?
I am not sure who decided what a bottle of wine should be, but I am for all for options, half bottles, full bottles and Magnums.
