Who the hell would rollerblade across the Australian red center? The Swiss, that’s who. And when they blow out a tire four hours north of Alice Springs, their only choice is to hitchhike with whatever crazy Americans happen to drive by on a food tour down the Stuart Highway.
We were on our way to Red Centre Farms when we picked up our underage rollerblader. I was eating Nutella out of the jar with my fingers. Amg was singing loudly to a punk cover of Mama Mia and banging on the dashboard. It wasn’t exactly a situation to inspire confidence, so when we turned off onto a small dirt track into the bush he probably assumed that he would never return to the fondue of his home again.
Red Centre Farms is just south of Ti-Tree, and their tagline is ‘A tin shed in the bush, not a castle in France’. Their prime export? Grapes and Mangoes. The entire area of dusty desert floats on a lake of water half the size of Sydney harbor if you dig down a meter, and dig they have. Perfectly geometrical rows of vines reach out into the hot hazy distance on one side, and an orchard of 1700 trees sprawls on the other.
The headquarters, a, yes, corrugated tin shack, instructed us to ring the bell if no one was in. Eventually a small weathered lady bustled around the side of the building, took one look at us, and declared, ‘we’ll have a tasting’. In no time we were herded to a plywood table with an alarming number of bottles. The lady gripped them between her knees to work out the corks while we slapped at the flies and sweated in the heat.
There was a uninspiring cabernet and shiraz mix, and a Riesling so dry that it could have been used for salad dressing. But that didn’t matter because Red Center Farm’s real export is Mango wines.
Oh yes, oh yes. All the nuance and delicate flavors of an excellent wine- and not a dessert wine either-but from a mango. We happily quaffed our way through a ‘Mango Magic’ (good with chicken or seafood) Mango Moonshine (a fortified liquor) and Mango Mist, a champagne better then anything I’ve ever had from grapes. The Swiss guy tucked right in, probably deciding that if he was about to die he might as well go happy.
There was much debate over mango chutney, marinade, topping, and jam, but in the end I bought only some champagne and our hitchhiker was persuaded to some mango sundae. Swaying from happy fumes, I had to ask: why don’t we get this stuff in the US? The answer was a shrug as she rang up our purchases- apparently almost their entire output each year goes to Japan. This gives me just one more reason, along with Pocky and tentacle porn, why it is imperative to invade right away.