Riverbank Estate – Jazz picnic

It can be nice to get outside of the box sometimes, colour outside the lines, see if the grass is greener on the other side, etc, etc. My foray into something different was heading along to one of my favourite Swan Valley haunts – RiverBank Estate – for their Jazz Picnic. By a turn of events with another of their functions, we wound up with tickets and it was something different for GG and myself, given that we’d never been to see jazz and we weren’t really outdoor people. Well I wasn’t at least. But we have been to ranger camping and had our little concert chairs so we were pretty much set.We arrived just after 5pm and there was already a decent crowd assembled outside listening to the Jazz band they had set up. The way it worked was that for your ticket, you got to choose a bottle of wine to share, as well as an impressive gourmet platter and then dessert.

We found ourselves a spot on the grass and then headed inside to pick up our platter. It made me hungry just looking at it, given the impressive selection! There was prosciutto wrapped asparagus with white truffle oil, garlic prawns marinaded in dill, cacciatore sausage with freshly squeezed lemon, potato and red onion salad with wholegrain mustard seed, roasted field mushrooms with Shiraz, Dukkah & olive oil, pickled beetroot with Star Anise, smoked salmon with baby capers on wholemeal toast, baked Turkish bread with a selection of dips and then also a selection of cheeses with homemade fruit bread & crackers. All I can say is wow – the flavours were all delicious! My favourites were probably the potato salad, really liked the addition of the seeded mustard and also the cheese! Can’t go wrong with brie and I think the other was a nice cheddar. Worked a treat with the fruit bread and a little of the fig jam. And for our wine choice we went with a bottle of the 2007 Celebration White, worked perfectly with the food and the beautiful warm evening.

Not sure whether we found room, but we were given the green light for dessert and GG went and collected our shared dessert plate. It included chocolate mocha tart with Irish Baileys foam and also a mini citrus tart with vanilla mascarpone & rose petal syrup. The chocolate cake was indulgently rich, I actually struggled to finish it, and the citrus tart offset it nicely, quite light but still full of flavour.

It was a really lovely way to spend an evening, very chilled and just another good time I can add to the growing list of good times I’ve had at Riverbank.