Dinner at Cactus Blue

Last night we visited Cactus Blue in Cremorne (Sydney), a restaurant that has been a favourite of ours over the past few yrs thanks to its excellent food + its location and BYO policy.
The steak in particular is always impressively good & I have never been disappointed with the quality of the food, however the service oscillates wildly between good and farcical.

Last night it fell onto the farcical side, as we amusingly watched our waitress f*ck up nearly every job she had to do. Lucky the food was tops.

Anyway, we enjoyed a De Bortoli Reserve Yarra Valley Chardonnay 2003 which was drinking at its prime. A complex, leesy, worked Chardonnay with obvious barrel ferment weight to the palate and lemon toasty development thanks to a few yrs bottle age. There is a faintly cheesy lemon character that I have noticed before in these De Bortoli Yarra Valley Chardies that is quite distinctive but not for everyone. Needless to say I appreciate it. Rating 18.4/20

This was accompanied by a Antipasto platter with lots of eggplant – Eggplant, such an excellent food! Yum.

For main I had a Eye Fillet on Garlic Mash, which was gloriously good. This matched well with a
Rockford Rifle Range Barossa Cabernet Sauvignon 2002 which could have probably done with more time in the bottle. Aromatically it had minty Cabernet characters, dark spicy fruits and a jubey freshness to it that belied its 6yrs of age, with some distinctive licorice characters that stuck out with glee. The palate has dark black fruits of blackberry and more spicy stewed plums, powerfully structured and yet not OTT, with firm tannins and serious acid on the back end that hint that this will genuinely improve with more time in the cellar.
A very old fashioned dry style in its structure, but in a ‘we know how to make wine’ style that many great old wineries have down pat. A damn good drink in the meantime. 18.5/20