a meal fit for a president? (not the current one and not rob)

[Ken Gargett]

this was recently sent to me by a friend. it is for a lunch hosted by our PM, Harold Holt, when LBJ visited back in the sixties, keen for support in Vietnam. the note in bold is from my friend. 

a couple of things.

1. ‘Pineapple Capricornia’ with Penfold's Minchinbury Champagne. A wonder LBJ didn’t bomb us. Anyone have a clue what this might have been? The Minchinbury would have set the Australian Treasury back about $1.10 back then. 

2. A fillet of whiting? were they trying to starve the poor bloke. LBJ does not strike me as the sort of bloke who would prefer a mouthful of fish to a good steak. 

3. If you look at the link (which now seems to have disappeared but what it says was...), “A luncheon for Lyndon B Johnson, USA president (having been signed in as president on a plane from Texas after the assassination of JFK) given by Harold Holt ( the only Australian Prime Minister to totally disappear in a swimming accident off Portsea beach).”.

How many PMs have partially disappeared?

 

 

 

Luncheon to the honourable Lyndon B. Johnson.

Here is a fascinating piece of Australiana for everybody to enjoy. 1966
A luncheon for Lyndon B Johnson, USA president ( having been signed in as president on a plane from Texas after the assassination of JFK) given by Harold Holt ( the only Australian Prime Minister to totally disappear in a swimming accident off Portsea beach).
Note the generic style wines being served; Moselle, burgundy and champagne ( who would serve a sweet Moselle style wine with prawns?)
Whiting Caprice...crumbed and fried whiting fillets topped with fried banana!!!!!
Pineapple Capricornia..god knows what this is....

 

 

 

Surely protocol would call for the toast to the sovereign head of the host country first.!! but "all the way with LBJ" was the norm for the time.

[Wookie]

We can get that at a cape cod clam shack

[Habana Mike]

What, no cigar on the menu?

[cmbarton]

Being a Hill Country Texan to his bones, and having often visited his ranch and sat under the Oak tree where he held many cabinet meetings with a plate of smoked brisket on his lap, I am sure LBJ could have been served anything and would still be wishing for some Pedernales River Chili and a cold Lone Star!

[Ken Gargett]

1 minute ago, cmbarton said:

Being a Hill Country Texan to his bones, and having often visited his ranch and sat under the Oak tree where he held many cabinet meetings with a plate of smoked brisket on his lap, I am sure LBJ could have been served anything and would still be wishing for some Perdenales River Chili and a cold Lone Star!

yep. after that meal, i reckon he would have been wondering which side we were on. 

[Fuzz]

10 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

this was recently sent to me by a friend. it is for a lunch hosted by our PM, Harold Holt, when LBJ visited back in the sixties, keen for support in Vietnam. the note in bold is from my friend. 

a couple of things.

1. ‘Pineapple Capricornia’ with Penfold's Minchinbury Champagne. A wonder LBJ didn’t bomb us. Anyone have a clue what this might have been? The Minchinbury would have set the Australian Treasury back about $1.10 back then. 

2. A fillet of whiting? were they trying to starve the poor bloke. LBJ does not strike me as the sort of bloke who would prefer a mouthful of fish to a good steak. 

3. If you look at the link (which now seems to have disappeared but what it says was...), “A luncheon for Lyndon B Johnson, USA president (having been signed in as president on a plane from Texas after the assassination of JFK) given by Harold Holt ( the only Australian Prime Minister to totally disappear in a swimming accident off Portsea beach).”.

How many PMs have partially disappeared?

 

The Museum of Democracy at Old Parliament House posed this on their Facebook page a while ago. The Principal Chef for the luncheon was Reg Moriarty. He did create another pineapple dessert for the NZ Prime Minister a year later.

 

As for how many PMs have partially disappeared, I can think of two; Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd come to mind. They get fobbed off from the top job into the backbench to continue to cause havoc for the next PM.

[Çnote]

13 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

Note the generic style wines being served

Thanks for posting this, it gave me some things to google that weren't cigar related!

Pineapple Capriorna seems to refer to a well known growing area of pineapple on the Capricorn coast of Australia, so perhaps some thoughts of this menu would be to show the agricultural bounty of Australia.

Before the EU and trade agreements, wines would often be referred to by their European equivalents, so that's not too damning as it looks like these wines would have been the toast of Australia in the 1960's. I'm not even 100% the Moselle style would have been as sweet as it seems the German house that established that winery goes back in Australia to pre 1900, when the German style was not governed by the 'quality' (ripeness) levels that became predominant post WWII, and wines were often fermented out to a very light degree of sweetness. I'll do some more research and post over the weekend...

That being said, I'm reminded of Monty Python's Australian wine promotion sketch...

[BrightonCorgi]

So much for protected names...

Nice to see a country serving their own wines.

In the US, it's has varied with each presidency, but they have leaned more to domestic wines.  In the old days, it was Spanish wines like Malaga, Bordeaux, or Madeira before we had a successful wine industry.

[cigaraholic]

I do remember that? Chateau Cockto de Rod Laver

[Ken Gargett]

8 hours ago, Çnote said:

Thanks for posting this, it gave me some things to google that weren't cigar related!

Pineapple Capriorna seems to refer to a well known growing area of pineapple on the Capricorn coast of Australia, so perhaps some thoughts of this menu would be to show the agricultural bounty of Australia.

Before the EU and trade agreements, wines would often be referred to by their European equivalents, so that's not too damning as it looks like these wines would have been the toast of Australia in the 1960's. I'm not even 100% the Moselle style would have been as sweet as it seems the German house that established that winery goes back in Australia to pre 1900, when the German style was not governed by the 'quality' (ripeness) levels that became predominant post WWII, and wines were often fermented out to a very light degree of sweetness. I'll do some more research and post over the weekend...

That being said, I'm reminded of Monty Python's Australian wine promotion sketch...

we should have used protected names from day one but of course, europe had the wines and everyone wanted to copy them. and so the names were used, for marketing. i think we still see some american sparklings called 'champagne', which really should be stopped. but we only stopped (the better producers had long stopped but the cheaper guys had not, because it sells) completely when the law demanded it. 

here, the regulations came in when we got certain concessions from the EU for our own wines for export (to do with alcohol levels and other things).

but there are still things to be argued about, even today. 

the italians are trying a fast one at the moment. prosecco has long been the name of the grape used in making prosecco. like pinot noir for burgundy if you like. so we can make pinot noir, but we cannot call it burgundy. which is as it should be. our makers were making prosecco, and calling it prosecco, as they are fully entitled to. but the italians didn't like that. tried to stop it. but they had no rights to do that. it would be like wherever oranges came from trying to stop us growing oranges and calling them oranges. so what they did was to change the name of the grape (to glera), about a decade ago, and then say that prosecco was a region not a grape, despite centuries of history to prove otherwise, and so we should not be allowed to call our wines prosecco (even if we are naming them after the actual prosecco grape).

we have told the italians to bugger off and the matter is currently in dispute. i am hoping our politicians don't cave but i can see them agreeing to what the italians want in exchange for something else. and because they are spineless. 

our wines back in the 60s were very average. a few exceptions - grange, some of the lehmann wines, henschkes, yalumba, tyrrells. but there were only a handful of producers. australians drank more fortified wine than table wine, per head, well into the 1970s, which seems amazing now.

that moselle would have undoubtedly been sweet. probably a mix of riesling, crouchen, who knows what. the lindemans would have been the pick. most likely semillon. the minchinbury would have been a bit sweet as well, i'd guess. and probably made from a mix off ondenc and trebbiano. not really much of a challenger to champagne. 

the buring and sobels connection would most likely be a hunter valley link (apols, i am away from home and all my old books on this stuff so this is top of head and may not be correct). leo buring was a doctor (rife in the aussie industry - dr lindeman and i think the original penfold was also a doctor). got into wine and was very well known for many decades. the leo buring rieslings from the clare and eden valleys, made by john vickery back in the 70s and 80s, are some of the greatest wines this country ever produced. stunning stuff. sobels was a well known name in the hunter as well. more recently, kevin sobels - think he started back in south australia with hardys (may have even married into the family), before moving to the hunter and kicking stuff off there. that wine above may be an early effort of his with the buring team, a couple of locals from the hunter at that stage. and minchinbury was pretty much our leading sparkler for ages, back then. though hardly too stellar. 

[Fugu]

43 minutes ago, Ken Gargett said:

the buring and sobels connection would most likely be a hunter valley link (apols, i am away from home and all my old books on this stuff so this is top of head and may not be correct)

https://books.google.de/books?id=PRBgIyFyWekC&lpg=PA66&dq=buring%20und%20sobel&pg=PA66#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Ken Gargett]

8 minutes ago, Fugu said:

https://books.google.de/books?id=PRBgIyFyWekC&lpg=PA66&dq=buring und sobel&pg=PA66#v=onepage&q&f=false

great post. never even heard of it. 

[Fugu]

Neither had I. Had to look it up. (as I had never heard of a „Mosel-producer“ of that name ?)

[Ken Gargett]

4 minutes ago, Fugu said:

Neither had I. Had to look it up. (as I had never heard of a „Mosel-producer“ of that name ?)

a lot of the aussie wine producers had a german background. they like to call it old deutsch. or silesian. 

and hence names like moselle (a corruption of mosel) became popular here. but that would not have meant it was anything like riesling! they would have been sweet, simple, pleasant wines. nothing special. 

[Fugu]

Funny thing being, Quedlinburg (not -berg) isn‘t even close  to a wine growing region. Seems Carl Sobels‘ parents had learned it from scratch down in Oz.

[Ken Gargett]

this is frustrating as i have a heap of books on all this back home. 

but you'd be right. many of those old vineyards were simply part of the mixed farming which most families conducted back then. if you wanted to survive in those old communities, you had to do a bit of everything - chooks, cattle, all sorts of fruit and vegies and of course, each family made its own wine. then the regions that did wine well capitalised - ditto the farmers - and so specialisation grew. and hence in places like the barossa, lots of vineyards. 

and they learnt from the knowledge of their fathers and neighbours. and passed it on. 

[Fuzz]

15 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

the buring and sobels connection would most likely be a hunter valley link (apols, i am away from home and all my old books on this stuff so this is top of head and may not be correct). leo buring was a doctor (rife in the aussie industry - dr lindeman and i think the original penfold was also a doctor). got into wine and was very well known for many decades.

Yep, Christopher Penfold was a doctor. Initially made fortifieds to give to his patients, as he believed in the medicinal properties of wine. I guess if you prescribe enough of it, your patients would be too drunk to complain or even care.