Chef Ben Shewry, of famed Melbourne restaurant Attica, lives close to the sea where there is an abundance of edible wild plants and vegetables. Ben harvests the wild plants by hand every day for the menu at Attica. Many of his Attica dishes utilise foraged ingredients. In order to showcase the uniqueness of these ingredients best, he prefers to keep them raw and in their natural state.Wine match Oliver’s Taranga Vermentino 2012, McLaren Vale, SA
What a cool dish! I feel it's cheating slightly not to have foraged in the wild for the accompanying wine after so much work has been done by the chef on the beach. To match the briny oyster, the pickled lemon and the beach succulents, we want a lighter bodied white with citrus as a backbone and a pure acid line down the middle. This will act like a squeeze of lemon on this dish and will only heighten the overall experience. Vermentino is also a white grape we've visited in the series before and it calls to mind beaches, if only for sitting next to while dining, rather than foraging on. This small batch version from Oliver’s Taranga ticks all of the boxes.
-Dan Coward