Our Adventures at the Good Food & Wine Show 2026
Over the course of many moons and several questionable decisions, & Co and I developed a tradition of attending Sydney’s Good Food & Wine Show.
It began as a bit of a piss-take, pardon the pun. We would wander from stall to stall trying to sound as though we understood why a red had notes of blackcurrant, or why a white apparently possessed a palate of petunias and the lingering essence of a freshly opened tennis ball.
The real game was seeing how many samples we could collect while simultaneously avoiding signing up for a wine-of-the-month club.
As an aside, those people are as persistent as timeshare salesmen. Make eye contact once and suddenly you are discussing a twelve-bottle quarterly commitment with a man named Sebastian who insists the fifth case will “really open up your palate”.
Over the years, however, the joke gradually became a genuine interest in food, wine and spirits.
Notice that the word “good” does not necessarily appear in that list. One man’s claret is another man’s Bordeaux, and one stallholder’s handcrafted artisan delicacy is another man’s reason to locate the nearest McDonald’s.
Nevertheless, the show became a staple of the Grump & Co calendar. Each year we would trundle into the exhibition centre, sample our way around the country and attempt to find our way home with varying degrees of sobriety and structural integrity.
Unfortunately, due to a global pandemic, ill health and a devastating death in the family, & Co had spent the previous two shows abroad.
That made 2026 our first Good Food & Wine Show together in several years.
I mention this partly because it matters to the story, and partly so that Grabber Granny, should she ever read this, understands exactly which sentimental occasion she chose to roll away with.
The day began with high hopes and a staycation in the city. There will be more about the hotel, restaurants and other attempts at grandeur in future posts. For now, I am concentrating on the moment one galling granny turned the Good Food & Wine Show into the Good God Food & Wine Show.
As will become increasingly obvious across these posts, I hate people.
Not individually.
Individually, people can be charming, funny, thoughtful and occasionally useful.
It is when they are herded into a confined space, plied with alcohol and encouraged to queue for tiny portions of cheese that the trouble begins.
Some people call this a crowd.
I prefer “a Petri dish of population”.
It had been a few years since I had last been confronted with one of these environments, and my people-putting-up-with muscle had clearly atrophied.
About halfway through the day, after hours of noise, movement, elbows, chatter, clinking glasses and people stopping dead in walkways to contemplate a cracker, I reached my limit.
My brain had taken all available inputs, thrown them into a cement mixer and switched it to purée.
I told & Co that I desperately needed to sit down, eat something and decompress.
Some might call this having a zen moment.
From my perspective, I needed to get the tachometer out of the red before the engine block shot through the bonnet.
Being the ever-obliging yin to my yang, & Co immediately escorted me to the food area, found me a seat and left me in a shattered heap with our $50 trundle trolley and backpack while he went in search of something edible.
I sat there attempting to recover while surrounded by what can only be described as Winestock.
A chair at the table was knocked over.
It was the chair opposite me at a table of four, so it was out of reach unless I stood up and navigated around the table. At that moment, standing up and navigating around anything felt roughly equivalent to scaling Everest while doing my tax return.
That was when Grabber Granny made her move.
I should clarify that, despite the name, she was probably somewhere around my age, give or take a six-pack. “Granny” is being used here less as an assessment of age and more as an emotional classification.
She bent down and picked up the fallen chair.
A kind gesture.
A gesture for which I would have been eternally grateful had she not immediately followed it by putting her grabby little hand on our trolley and walking away with it.
I thanked her for picking up the chair.
She took our booze.
Still trying to get my brain out of explode mode, it took a second or two for the gravity of the situation to register.
At first, I assumed she had grabbed it by mistake.
After all, she had left another trolley nearby.
Perhaps she had simply become confused in the chaos and taken the wrong one.
Then I called out, “Excuse me!”
Unless my memory has embroidered the scene in the days since, she increased speed.
This left me in something of a quandary.
Sitting here now, in the peace and quiet, I know exactly what I should have done. I should have picked up the backpack, followed her and calmly explained that she had the wrong trolley.
What actually happened was that the redline turned purple and I melted further into the chair.
A lovely woman nearby, who I believe was named Rebecca, had witnessed at least part of what happened.
“I’m trustworthy,” she said. “Go after her and I’ll mind your stuff.”
This was an incredibly kind offer.
Unfortunately, I am both a Grump and a firm non-believer in judging contents by the label on the tin. I had already encountered one apparently helpful stranger who had responded to my gratitude by stealing our alcohol.
So I did what any sensible, overloaded Grump would do.
I rang & Co in a panic.
When he returned, we inspected the trolley Grabber Granny had left behind.
It contained some glasses and a few chocolates.
That was it.
Our leisurely expedition through the vineyards and distilleries of the country had disappeared.
The carefully selected wines.
The spirits.
The annual duck sausage, which & Co insists on buying every year despite it having the approximate chemical properties of industrial sealant.
More importantly, the trolley contained bottles we had chosen for actual occasions and actual people.
There was an expensive tawny port in a beautiful bottle bearing my niece’s name. I had bought it to share at Christmas with my ageing father, who adores port.
There were also bottles we had carefully chosen to open when my sister-in-law visited at Christmas.
These were not merely random purchases collected during an afternoon of enthusiastic sampling.
They were future moments.
A drink with Dad.
A Christmas visit.
A story attached to a bottle before the bottle had even been opened.
Grabber Granny had not simply taken our haul.
She had pinched our plans and left us with a few chocolates and some glassware.
We decided there was still a chance she had made an honest mistake.
Perhaps she would inspect the trolley, realise she had accidentally acquired several hundred dollars’ worth of wine, spirits and caustic charcuterie, and return to the scene to exchange it for her own gauntlet of non-alcoholic misery.
She did not.
We wheeled our consolation trolley to the information desk and attempted to explain what had happened.
The young woman behind the counter stared at us with an expression that roughly translated to, “Oh, fuck.”
That may be an embellishment. She was sympathetic and did her best, and I do not want her getting into trouble because my internal narrator enjoys dramatic licence.
We left our phone number and were told we would receive a call later if our trolley was handed in.
No call came.
By that stage, Grabber Granny had thoroughly garnished our grand day with a generous coating of gross.
Grump became grumpy.
We abandoned the event and called the whole thing a write-off.
A few days later, I did receive a call from the venue.
Our lost trolley had been located and was available for collection.
Sadly, after a brief description of the contents, it became clear that what they had recovered was not our carefully curated collection of Christmas drinks, sentimental port and toxic duck product.
It was Grabber Granny’s abandoned trolley.
We will collect it.
We may have left the Good Food & Wine Show empty-handed, but at least we will have some glasses.
And at the next gathering at Grump & Co’s, when someone asks where they came from, we will be able to tell them the story of Grabber Granny.
Preferably while drinking something she did not steal.