Grape Expectations by Max Crus Rich pickings on slippery slope of super

It’s class warfare.

Un-Australian.

Just because I have $3millon superannuation Labor wants to cancel me and my lifestyle. Next they’ll be coming for my family home, even though that has never been mentioned, except by Angus Taylor, which the media slavishly latched upon, so it must be right.

I’ve earned my $3million fair and square, well, Daddy did, but I studied hard at St Pratt’s School for the Privileged (um, is that the right way around, Dear?), and equally hard at Bond Online University (thanks for picking up the HECS, Dad), and I worked hard at Porter Dutton Hockey and Partners, working my way up to Chief Conveyancing Clerk and I’m not giving it up. If you want $3million in super, just study harder, work harder and get new

Ziegler Barossa Fire Clay Grenache 2022, $27. One of a trio of things from new label Ziegler. Young and modest for a Barossan, but with enough fre in the belly, as well as the clay. Somehow slightly smarter than it’s shiraz sister. 9.3/10

Ziegler Barossa Hack Barrow GSM (Grenache Shiraz Mataro), 2022, $27. When I was a kid, a friend’s dad had a Holden Mataro, or something like that. Prob worth $3mill in super by now or another 50 cases of this. The pick of the bunch of Zieglers for us. 9.4/10 parents.

Sevenhill Clare Valley ‘27 Miles’ Riesling 2022, $50.

Okay, Labor isn’t eating into my $3million nest egg, which I’ve already paid tax on remember, um, actually, no, the accountant fxed that, but they’re still eating into the interest earned and what I want to know is why Labor set the bar so low?

It’s little consolation that you can have $6million in super and not pay extra if you split it with your wife, but who wants that? What if she divorces me?

I barely get $120,000 per year from $3mill’. It’s hard enough living on such meagre returns let alone having to donate 30 per cent to roads and hospitals and schools. Granted a fair whack of that tax actually goes straight to our darling Sebastian’s Kings College Trinity and Aphrodite’s Our Lady Help of Accountants, but the fees alone soak up

$50 is up there for a riesling, possibly the uppitiest in the country, but it makes 27 miles seems like a fair journey if you have to. That was the distance the founding Jesuit brothers of Sevenhill walked to market in nearby Burra. 9.5/10.

Sevenhill Clare Valley Inigo Merlot 2021, $28. Is this the best value merlot this side of the Black Stump* Coffee Shop in Innamincka? If not, it is nevertheless big and bold and proper merlot. 9.4/10. *might be made up. Honeytree Hunter Valley Clairette, 2012, $48. Great name for a toffy girl eh? “Off to clarinet lessons, Clairette”. This reeks of classic old riesling which

$100k, plus the $5000 donation for the new headmaster’s lap pool. There’s barely enough left over for the insurance on the Aston Martin, and one can’t have one’s wife driving an uninsured vehicle for goodness sakes. It’s class warfare, the politics of envy (well, who isn’t envious of $3mill super?), and remember Albo, there’s more than 80,000 people like me. That’s 0.3

Max Crus

percent of the population mate, an entire electoral seat if we all lived in the same place…um, which we do, and that’s a tealcoloured Aston btw. Now let’s see, if we now pay $15,000 and the tax rate doubles, how much will that be? Um, better phone my accountant.

Bugger it, what’s another $15k?

Well, 50 dozen of these for one : is fantastic. Classic French variety that sadly fell from grace as marketing types took over and foisted bucketloads of NZ sauv blanc and bland pinot gris upon us instead. Poor Clairette will be crying in her turret high above the moat. Let down your hair Clairette! 9.5/10.

Honeytree Hunter Valley ‘Paul Alexander’ Old Vines Shiraz 2011, $88. Predictably this has the character of older shiraz, commensurately round and soft, but also very full-bodied belying its meagre 13 per cent. Makes you want to see what every wine tastes like at 12 years of age. 9.4/10.

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