29 January 2012
This has been the hit of my summer. It's a new product from Moet & Chandon,
not released yet in New Zealand but brought in as a Christmas gift from Miss
Moet.
I loved the effervescent effect of bubbles poured over ice, and the wine (a
true Champagne) is lower than most in both alcohol and acidity so it's
perfect for summer drinking on a sunny day.
Let's hope we can get to purchase this wonderfully innovative and refreshing
wine soon here in Auckland. It really is summer in a bottle.
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19 October 2011
A stunning day for a stunning lunch this weekend, when HSH Prince Albert of Monaco visited Matakana. A quick tour of the Sculpture Trail at Brick Bay Winery and he was whisked to the private residence of owners Christine and Richard Didsbury for a barbecue feast.
So what to serve to drink? Local beer from the Leigh Sawmill boutique brewery and of course, a choice of three stunning wines from Brick Bay winery. The Rose went down a treat with the Prince, everyone loved the pre-release 2011 pinot gris, and Prince Albert's bob-sledding mates Mark One and Mark Two were fans of the very European style Brick Bay Pharos 2005. "Lots of Malbec," declared Mark One.
Brick Bay winery is perfect for a stroll through the sculpture trail, lunch and a wine tasting. Only 50 minutes from Auckland. Arabella Lane, Matakana (near Snells Beach.) Open every day until 4pm.
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6 October 2011
I am a huge fan of Saint Clair wines. We've always got a case of two of their chardonnay which seems to disappear faster than the bread crusts I throw to the birds on my lawn everyday. And it seems I can find them around the planet.
So I was thrilled to spot Saint Clair had two wines on the list at the brand new China House restaurant, bar, gallery and cafe complex in Penang, Malaysia. Pictured here is the Vicars Choice riesling, ice cold and frosty.
The other wine I didn't shoot was the Pinot Noir; it was equally ice cold and frosty. Apparently all red wines here in Penang are stored under refrigeration as they tend to "cook" in all that heat.
Go Saint Clair!
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20 July 2011
I have just finished a bottle of the newly released Brancott Estate ‘Limited Edition RWC' Reserve Sauvignon Blanc 2011. The bottle, pictured above, is no doubt the flagship wine to go along with the exclusive sponsorship Pernod Ricard have invested in for the Rugby World Cup. Good on them. All the fans at Eden Park, the Wellington 'cake tin' stadium and all other rugby venues around New Zealand will only get to drink Brancott wines.
They are fine wines. That goes without saying and anyone who orders up a bottle like the one I have had will be well pleased with the gorgeous ripe fruity aromas. I did love this wine and even my husband who normally gets quite sniffy about my 'savvy' drinking habits tasted it and approved. (He prefers chardonnay, but then he is a man.)
But my nagging worry is that all the visitors who spend thousands getting here will not have a chance to taste the enormous variety of other splendid wines produced by our more than 600 other wine companies. The IRB and the RWC boards sold sponsorships to fill their coffers, and in the process sold out on a lot of what we do really well in New Zealand. My friend in Matakana, who is trying to attract rugby visitors to her wonderful winery and sculpture trail on the days they're looking for something else to do, is not permittted to mention the word 'wine' in her marketing material. What utter nonsense!
I can't blame Pernod Ricard for coughing up the bucks for the sponsorship but surely someone in the government who backed this whole performance and palaver should have been a bit more clever about all this silly exclusivity?
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30 June 2011
It's a tough call, but a winter lunch with three courses and three winemakers sounded like an attractive proposition. Especially as all the winemakers were women. And it was a lunch of surprises.
The first surprise was the venue. I had been to the Longroom twice and on both occasions had never seen any food, so lunch, with a menu of three choices for each of the three courses, plus a little 'amuse' to start was quite startling. We ate well.
Then more surprises; the three women. Each was charmingly honest and I have been thinking since, that if that had been a lunch with three kiwi male winemakers we would have heard plenty about wine and the nuances of vintages, vinification and wineries. Instead we were treated to stories of how these successful women came to be working in what until recently was a male dominated industry. Refreshing!
Jules Taylor was so carried away with her story she had to be reminded to mention her gorgeous sauvignon blanc, one of my favourites. She took a huge risk moving from a position with a large international wine group to dedicating herself to her own brand. I loved the way she told us it took her 18 months to find the name for her wines - Jules Taylor! She will continue to do well.
Helen McCarthy is from the Barossa and senior winemaker at Taylors. She was offered the job and thought how boring it might be at the time, but is so enthusiastic about the Taylor family now that she can't imagine working elsewhere. Her wine was a surprise; a meaty, savoury pinot noir that had me baffled for a while, but then I had chosen whitebait fritter for that course. Another time I shall take the duck.
Sara Scott from the family owned Allan Scott winenmakers spoke for the very first time ever in a public situation. She had no need to be nervous. This viticulturalist was funny, warm and everybody loved her. Both the sparkling wine to start and her late harvest riesling were very good too!
I can't wait for the next women in wine lunch as the only men in sight were either waiting on us or consigned to the outdoor courtyard. Excellent.
Pic: Jules, Sara and Helen with their wine.
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23 June 2011
I spent four glorious days at the Sheraton Full Moon Resort in the Maldives. I can't tell you how sophisticated it was.
And the perfect wine to drink in the balmy heat, while looking over the calm aqua waters inside the reef on the Indian Ocean?
Saint Clair Sauvignon Blanc. Crisp, elegant and with a lovely fruity nose, this was my tipple of choice every night I was there. So nice to see and drink some of my favourite wine so far from home.
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20 May 2011
I am attempting to show a little of New Zealand to Madhur Jaffrey who was in the country for the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival last weekend. We flew to Wellington and were driven to Te Horo where Ruth Pretty held a High Tea for her at the Pretty's amazing Springfield property. The kitchen produced a wonderful small feast of spicy snacks. Madhur, eloquent and elegant, is one of the best speakers in the food world, while the legendary Ruth Pretty is one of the best hostesses in the world. A perfect combination.
Later we had a delicious home-cooked intimate dinner in the Pretty’s grand kitchen after the event, and Paul Pretty delved into his cellar for some really lovely wines. (see pic above.) In front of the fire we sipped on a glass of Veuve Clicquot “La Grande Dame” 1998, toasty and yeasty and just the right wine to toast our fabulous international guest. Then into the kitchen, and in front of another roaring fire we sat down to perfectly cooked scampi tails which were accompanied by Atarangi pinot gris 2006, made in a dry style with elegance; probably one of the best wines made from this grape I have tried from Martinborough.
Ruth served lamb for our main course; Madhur was delighted as she is keen to taste all the local specialties. Lamb with beetroot was perfectly matched to a very special treat. Otago’s Felton Road winery makes wonderful pinot noir wines and select grapes for special areas of their vines for single vineyard bottling. The Block 3 has become one of the cult wines of NZ wine scene and even though the grapes for this wine were picked seven years in the 2004 vintage, it still tasted a fresh as a daisy with wonderful ripe fruity over tones to the elegant nose it is currently displaying.
And to finish with a lovely seasonal fruity dessert, while Paul poured Vinoptima Late Harvest gewürztraminer 2004. I knew about Nick Nobilo’s Gisborne foray into his vineyard that only produces gewürztraminer, but this late harvest wine was a first for me. It was sweet without being cloying or with those hard edges gewürztraminer often displays. We could close our eyes and see rose petals just by sniffing it, and it really was a wine to dream on. Thanks Paul and Ruth!
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23 April 2011
My birthday was fun. I cannot recall having a birthday on Good Friday before, but my new column in the Listener and my 100th birthday made two great reasons to party. (I was asked for my birthdate this week in order to register to vote for the best Farmers Market in NZ, and the nosey buggers wanted to know the year. I chose 1911 from the list they provided to choose from!)
Anyway, about 30 people came over and had a couple or three glasses of wine each over two hours last night, and the garbologist in me was interested to see this morning what had been consumed.
Four bottles of French Champagne, one bottle of pinot grigio, one of viognier, surprisingly one bottle of sav blanc and that was Mahi, four bottles of riesling, six chardonnays, and five reds - 2 pinot noirs and three Aussie reds. Plus one dozen ice cold beers.
I am surprised that chardonnay still leads the field, in the current climate of A-B-C. And I guess we would have had more Champagne if it had been chilled but we forgot to put it in the fridge - champagne is the one wine that should never ever be drunk warm.
A great party. And amazing finger food by Annabelle Guinness of Matakana - she is a star!
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16 April 2011
Wine and food matching is interesting. Even the most seasoned palates will agree to differ, even if a self considered wine buff told me the other day that pinot noir ruins a roast lamb dinner. Whaaaat?
Right now we're in the midst of the Bluff oyster season and I find it hard to pass on them in my local supermarket where pottles are $23. So oysters have become my favourite pre-dinner snack, accompanied by a glass of wine, while my dinner cooks.
I am not a huge fan of chardonnay, but the just released Mahi Twin Valleys 2009 chardonnay from Marlborough that we opened was soft, elegant, restrained and pleasantly and quietly reminiscent of ripe stone fruits. That Brian Bicknell is one smart winemaker. It really went well with those oysters, or as they say a match made in heaven. I will be out and about looking for more.
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23 January 2011
There’s always going to be an occasion to open some of those special bottles that are squirreled away in the cellar. We met a passionate wine buff, Rick, and his wife Diana visiting from Bath, UK at a friend’s celebration party this week. They were on their way to a Pinot Noir conference in Central Otago and really knew their New Zealand wines. But, my husband discovered, they’d never had the opportunity to drink the well-made wines of the cultish winemaker Neil McCallum of Dry River. So doing our duty for God and country we invited the couple, and their hosts here to dinner.
Neil McCallum (who is a good friend of ours) was one of the earliest to move to Martinborough in the very early 80s and plant the now revered Terraces with a range of grapes. They’ve proved to be stellar wines, and for the last decade or two, if you wanted to buy his wines directly from the winery, there was a waiting list to go on the mailing list. We stocked our cellar most years with a goodly selection, and now eke the wines out when we know there’s an appreciative palate around.
The evening was a great success. We started out with Dry River Riesling 1998 Amaranth from the Craighall vineyard. Neil designates a wine “Amaranth” when he’s convinced it will cellar for an extended period. Twelve years on, he was right with this one! The wine was sublime, very dry and steely with lovely lingering fruit flavours that were soft and subtle. “If you hadn’t shown me the bottle I would have been certain this was a ten year old Riesling from one of the best Alsace houses,” our guest said.
We then moved to the table for my fish course, and served Dry River Pinot Gris 2002 Amaranth. We live in an area known for Pinot Gris (Matakana) and this was spectacularly different from the wines we drink locally. With a complex palate, dry and yet bright and flavoursome, the match with our fish was good, although I kept wishing we’d had another bottle of that sumptuous Riesling on hand.
It was then time for the reds. In an unusual move, we served Dry River Syrah 2003 Lovat Vineyard first as I had cooked a subtly spiced pork belly and was convinced the syrah would work far better as a match for the food than the Pinot Noir we intended to drink too. The wine was spectacular; rich, dark, full of amazing aromas and flavours, and yes, it worked wonderfully with my food. But the Pinot Noir was crying out too. So another round of glasses was poured so we could try Dry River Pinot Noir 2004. It too was incredibly intensely deep crimson coloured. The flavours absolutely leapt from the glass and it was soft, unctuous and the stuff of dreams. Our British guests were impressed, their house hosts almost overwhelmed.
But there’s more. No-one was quite ready to leave and although we had Dry River Gewurztraminer waiting, we all voted to have another red. So I pulled another ace wine from the cellar. Cameron Douglas had given me a Clos de Ste Anne Pinot Noir Naboth’s Vineyard 2006 from the Millton Vineyards. The colour was much more New Zealand Pinot Noir-ish. A lighter more ‘muddy red’ colour but still a special wine with acres of complexity and lots of lovely wild flavours. I am sure Rick and Diana will find it hard going in Central Otago to match such a wine dinner as this one.
Note: Pic above shows the wines on my bench but I am not quite sure how that lovely rogue Felton Road Block 3 got into the picture. I can assure you we did not drink that on this occasion.
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