Episodes

Hospitality is a craft of its own, the art of making people happy with what you cook. Sometimes it starts with a single smell: fragrant curries, apricot chutney and desiccated coconut drifting from a family kitchen in South Belfast, a household table where adventure and generosity came standard. Chef Alastair McLeod carried that table with him from Belfast to Scotland, London and the Languedoc-Roussillon. There he cooked over open fire at La Frégate in Collioure. He then joined Paul Rankin's la...

Every dish carries a history, and every tradition we call authentic is the product of people, place and time meeting at the table. In this episode of Sensing Up, food is explored through the lens of history and culture, from the first colonial kitchens of Sydney and Hobart to the convent pantries of eighteenth-century Provence. Barbara Santich is Professor Emeritus at the University of Adelaide, where she established the graduate program in gastronomy, and one of Australia's most respected food...

Water is rarely spoken of in terms of vintage or terroir, unless a source is distinctive enough to demand the vocabulary usually reserved for wine. This episode of Sensing Up turns that vocabulary toward a spring on the Yorke Peninsula, where a family has spent nearly two decades learning to taste, describe and finally bottle what lies beneath their land. Damien Smith is the founder and custodian of Carribie Mineral Water, drawn from a single aquifer on his family's remote property on South Aus...

Tea has quietly become one of the clearest signals of where wellness culture is heading, and Dilmah has spent forty years proving that an ethical, family-run business creating a superior product is a recipe for success. Dilhan Fernando returns to Sensing Up as Chairman and CEO of Dilmah, the Ceylon tea house his father, Merrill J. Fernando, built from a single conviction that tea should carry the name of its origin rather than disappear into a blend. Dilhan still walks the gardens and picks the...

Grenache spent the better part of a century in South Australia as the grape left on the vine until the Shiraz was in. That neglect, strangely enough, is part of what makes some of the oldest vineyards in McLaren Vale so prized today. Valérie sits with Paddy Gilhooly, co-owner of Thistledown Wines, the McLaren Vale project founded in 2010 by Master of Wine Giles Cooke and built on a patchwork of old Grenache vineyards that growers once struggled to sell. Edinburgh-born and now an Australian citi...

Thomas Hardy arrived in South Australia in 1850, and what followed was the making of one of the country's most storied wine dynasties. One hundred and seventy-three years later, his sixth-generation descendant Bec Hardy is making wine in McLaren Vale with the same instinct for possibility. In this episode, Valérie is joined by Bec Hardy and her husband Richard for a conversation that moves freely between history and harvest, heritage and reinvention. Bec traces the arc from Thomas Hardy's impro...

Australian wines have never been better, never more diverse, and the perception of them outside Australia has never been worse. It is a paradox that troubles David Gleave, and one he believes can only be undone through storytelling. Valérie sits with one of the most respected figures in the wine world: a Master of Wine since 1986, co-founder of Liberty Wines, and now the man behind Willunga 100, a small-production Grenache label rooted in the sandy soils of Bluett Springs, McLaren Vale. What un...

Valérie Henbest sits down with Nick Ryan — senior wine writer for The Australian, contributor to The World of Fine Wine, Halliday Magazine and The Robb Report, and one of the most compelling voices in Australian wine today. Nick inherited the column previously held by James Halliday for four decades. It is, as Valérie notes, a big pair of shoes to fill — though Nick's feet are more than equal to them. Their conversation moves through the full arc of a life shaped by wine: from a childhood sip o...

In this sumptuous episode of Sensing Up, Valerie Henbest sits down with Guy de Saint Laurent — a Frenchman whose career has taken him from yeast factories and foie gras kitchens to the world's most exclusive caviar farms. Guy shares the remarkable journey of French farm caviar, the science and soul behind producing it, and why Australia's culinary scene is fast becoming one of the most exciting in the world. Bring your five senses — and perhaps a glass of champagne. We begin with foie gras — wh...

Valerie Henbest talks with chocolate royalty, Kirsten Tibballs, about her path from teenage apprentice to gold-medal-winning pastry champion and MasterChef Australia favourite. They unpack the pressure of live competitions, the making of The Chocolate Queen TV series and how terroir, fermentation and farming shape the future of chocolate. Savour Chocolate and Patisserie School In 2002, Tibballs founded Savour Chocolate and Patisserie School. Tibballs cited the local Australian market as "laggi...

A conversation that sits at the crossroads of diplomacy, agriculture and pure pleasure launches Season 4 of "Sensing Up". Valerie speaks with guest, Vincent Hebrail, the French Embassy's Counsellor for Agricultural Affairs in Canberra, about what it means to be French in Australia today—professionally and at the table. Vincent describes his work strengthening ties between the two countries across agriculture, food, forestry and fisheries, and reflects on how welcome he and his family have felt ...

In this Season 4 trailer of Sensing Up, host Valerie Henbest invites you to listen with your 5 senses on high alert. To live life more fully. In short, she is on a mission to awaken and enhance pleasure in your life by simply paying more attention to it, using each and every one of your senses as often as possible. She also believes that "the more you know, the better it tastes." This new season features conversations with chefs, winemakers, food innovators, and artisans who turn the craft of m...