A Special Sum of Parts

The "Trotty Special" is composed of Tanqueray, Pompelmo, fresh lime juice. It’s a mix often deployed at The Wheatsheaf Hotel – a.k.a. The Wheaty (Thebarton, Adelaide, South Australia) – to a patron in need of a restorative beverage that might be capable of righting the wrongs of the night or morning before.

I’ve observed at first hand the recuperative effects of the Trotty Special, although a 'fancy’ of something tangy, aromatic, and bitter in the pale ale department usually fixes me up.
Long before I relocated to Adelaide I rated the Wheaty most highly: the finest craft brew pub in the land I’ve opined before for many reasons. The Wheatsheaf Hotel was reborn in 2003 by Emily 'Trotty’ Trott, Jade Flavell and Liz O’Dea and became a genuine boozer legend pretty much from the outset: whence it became 'The Wheaty’.

Eclectic Landlady

It was one quiet lunchtime perhaps four years ago that my (former) partner and I were chatting with Emily while she was administering our drinks and told her we were looking in the Mile End-Thebarton area for a place to live.

Emily got excited. There was a house owned by friends of hers, she told us, who’d relocated overseas and it was up for sale. They wanted it to go to the right people. Emily enthused about the Thebarton area and explained that she used to live just up the street from the place we were soon to look at, and that it was pretty quiet roundabouts. She did elaborate though that when she lived on Maria St (I think it was) a brothel was located up the road.

She also recalled that one morning—after a late shift at the pub—she awoke to repeated rings on her doorbell. She put on her granny-style dressing gown and fluffy slippers and answered the front door with a frown and bleary eyes. The caller was visibly startled at the sight of her — hurredly stepped backwards apparently — but then shock turned instantly into profound relief when she succinctly informed him that the place he probably wanted was two doors up the street.

This is how Emily told it, or is hopefully in the spirit of how she did, and the story popped into mind the first time I sighted the decal on the tap of the Wheaty Brewing Corps 'Landlady’ English Pale Ale. It depicts a woman far older than Emily in rollers, smoking a pipe, and with a foaming pewter tankard in hand. Don’t reckon she’d take too much nonsense being woken up early after a late one.

Sadly, Emily passed away on 19th May this year (2016) and I don’t think got to see the Landlady decal. She hated smoking, but I reckon would have approved of the illustration nonetheless. She was diagnosed with especially aggressive cancer early in 2014 and underwent treatment for a year. The kind of treatment which could remove the soul and spirit from some as well as the cancer, but Emily came back, her mesmeric blue-green eyes still charged with intensity. She was in remission for a year.

During this time she continued behind the bar at The Wheaty and at the boardroom table of Wirra Wirra Vineyards in McLaren Vale. Because Emily, you see, is the scion of another ‘Trotty’, her late father Greg who formed Wirra Wirra as we know it today. Now I hardly knew Greg – met him three times I reckon – but I’ve spent time in the company of a few people who’ve passed through Wirra Wirra absorbing the unique Trotty take on what it means to make wine in Australia, Steve Pannell of S.C. Pannell being one, Ben Riggs of Mr. Riggs another.

The cat's out of the freezer bag

And also my (former) partner, Kerri Thompson of wines by KT whose first full-time gig was with Wirra (when Ben Riggs was chief winemaker). Her immediate task ahead of the 1994 vintage was to thoroughly clean the freezer because the body of the winery cat, Mrs. Wigley, had been interred there for some weeks while Trotty senior decided on as to where on the property she should be laid to rest. Kerri learned quickly that she was about to become part of a singular wine culture.

A wine culture which has been nurtured to this day, although managing director, Andrew Kay told me it was only recently that he learned of the cat in the freezer story. (Mrs. Wigley is the name of Wirra Wirra’s rosé which is obviously best served icy cold).

We did speak more seriously of Emily and the special place she occupied at Wirra Wirra. 'For me her role on the board was as the conscience and soul of Wirra,” he affirmed. 'To tell us whether something felt right for Wirra Wirra: whether Trotty – Greg, her father – would have approved.”

Trotty senior would have most certainly have approved of the ’14 Wirra Wirra The Absconder Grenache which I was going to feature in my final Australian Financial Review What to Drink wines to cellar selection this week, but it’s all sold out (although if you have some it will reliably and deliciously evolve for a decade and more).

I’ll let you know what I think of the ’15 – which I’ve tasted as components from barrel – when it crosses the tasting bench. But Paul Smith and his team are doing excellent things with their small parcel releases of grenache, shiraz and cabernet sauvignon. They make a fair bit of wine at Wirra Wirra – what with Church Block an’ all – but the care and attention to detail paid to their smaller batches is to be lauded. As is that applied to their larger volume wines for that matter.

As quiet, noisy, or hoppy as you like it

But back to The Wheaty, an establishment conferred by Trotty, Jade and Liz, with a singular pub culture. For one thing it’s devoid of the South Australian anti-social scourge of pokies. Nor are there TVs tuned to twenty-four hour sports channels, although The Wheaty is a proud supporter and sponsor of the local gals roller-derby.

But there’s darts, art (mini exhibits from the known and new), a pool table, a shady beer garden: and Quiet (board games, newspapers, Wi-Fi); plus Noisy (live music and a regular amount of it, under the galvo out back).

There’s a lot of choice (in a tasty sense) and varied Wines, offered at really reasonable prices, and Whiskies galore from all corners of the globe. Graham Wright of The Odd Whisky Coy, Australia’s most respected specialist malt whisky importer, emcees tastings in the band shed whenever there’s a distiller of distinction in town.

And then there’s Beer: almost too many fine and crazy craft brews from around the globe in bottle, can, or pulled through a dozen taps, one of which will be additionally drawn through ‘The Glasshopper’, a cylindrical, sight glass-looking, counter-mounted vessel loaded with fresh hops and sometimes other flavourful natural things for an alternative aromatic angle. The Wheaty is a peat, malt, rye – wheat – and hop lovers’ heaven.

The pub was legend even before Jade, all things beer at The Wheaty, installed a truly micro, but super-smart and shiny brewery within the hotel grounds. With the full-support of her business partners, of course, but hers nonetheless. It was commissioned in April 2014 or thereabouts. That Jade, Liz and the crew achieved all this while Emily was absent undergoing her treatment, is testimony to the strength, will and dedication to all good things ingrained at The Wheaty.

All up there have been 137 Wheaty Brewing Corps brew days thus far from which 76 different beers have been created. You can read extensive, highly descriptive and emotive, tasting notes of all these on the beers at www.wheatybrewingcorps.com The words are all those of head brewer, Flavell, who writes with same effusive, rapid fire intensity as she articulates in person.

Of these beers twelve have been collaborations with other craft brewers, both locals and internationals. One of the great strengths of the craft brewing community is that they openly express - and in detail - what they are doing and how, and seek out like-minded others to work with. It’s the counter opposite to the big brewery beer as brand, proprietary secret recipe ‘brewery fresh’ shit.

Trotty was special, and so too the culture she helped inculcate at The Wheaty and maintained at Wirra Wirra. If things go a bit awry over New Year’s Eve consider Tanqueray, San Pellegrino Pompelmo and fresh lime juice the morning after. If it works for you then you know to whom to raise your glass.