The seven hour lunch

This is what Christmas in July at Murrumbateman looks like. "Green drought" is the way the locals describe it. The light winter rain showers have resulted in a dusting of green, but it only goes thin, shale rock deep.

The vineyards in winter are a feather dusting of grey brown twigs across the Nanimo ridges.

The Fischer's sheep are still producing best quality, superfine, merino fleece but only because of their carefully selected gene pool and because they're hand fed. These are tough times for vignerons and wool producers.

Our Christmas in July lunch today is a celebration of continuing friendship and bounty, despite the difficulties of our troubled earth. Freshly shucked oysters, roast turkey and ham, plum pudding and all the trimmings seem to taste so much better on a cold July afternoon at Murrumbateman than Christmas in December.

We enjoy perfect partnerships: Majella with onion jam canapes; figs with Castello cheese and proscuitto, reisling with oysters, Word of Mouth Shiraz (from Orange) and Campbells Shiraz Viognier with turkey and ham and the most devine Seppelts Rutherglen Tokay with our plum pud. It was a marathon 7 hour lunch, including all the Fischer travel tales from their recent trip to Italy, Switzerland and Northern France.

Maddy and Thomas kept the Christmas spirit alive by introducing live music. Maddy is sounding amazing in her first year of clarinet and Thomas gave us some snippets of his jazz repertoire on piano. Sophie was kept busy attending to Maggie the Jack Russel (mix).