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Dates change for Auckland Winetopia

Winetopia Auckland has been postponed to 28 and 29 October 2022 after the Government's announcement on Monday 4 April that New Zealand would stay at the Red traffic light setting due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The Winetopia team, in consultation with sponsors and venue managers, agreed it would be best to postpone the event in the interests of providing confidence to it attend in safety and comfort.Tickets will automatically be valid on the new dates and if ticket holders cannot atte...

Friday drinks with Duncan Shouler, fan of La Tache

If he is ever reincarnated, Duncan Shouler would like to come back as a bottle of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti La Tache, one of the great grand cru wines of the world, but in the meantime his family remains his greatest achievement, despite all the innovation going on in his current role as chief winemaker for the Giesen Group. This winery's humble beginnings were in Canterbury when the German born Giesen brothers, Theo, Alex and Marcel, founded the company after emigrating to New Zealand fr...

Friday drinks with Cameron Woodhouse of Greystone Wines

Greystone Wines is one of the jewels in North Canterbury's wine crown and it now has a new chef at its cellar door restaurant.  Meet Cameron Woodhouse, who has worked at Miro, Inati and Eliza’s Manor in Christchurch, at Jack’s Point and Amisfield in Central Otago and at Gleneagle’s Hotel in the Scottish highlands.  This weekly interview on this website is inspired by the Proust questionnaire What do you consider your greatest achievement? My partner and I recently bough...

'Wine' of the week - but is it wine if it contains no alcohol?

Two new zero alcohol 'wines' were released this week by the Giesen Group, the first company in New Zealand to create zero percent alcohol wine with the launch of its first zero alcohol Sauvignon Blanc in 2020.  This week the company launched a new zero percent alcohol Riesling and a Merlot, one of which tasted uncannily like wine with alcohol while the other one remains, in my view, a work in progress. The Merlot is good quality but the Riesling is excellent.  The parenthesis in the fi...

Friday wine with Rachael Carter who loves Fleetwood Mac and loathes wine snobs

Rachael Carter began importing screwcaps to New Zealand a year after declaring that they weren't her preference when it came to wine closures, but within half a decade, they had over taken the wine industry in this country, building a substantial business for her. Despite which, she greatest achievement is her daughter, Maren, whose namesake is a dry Riesling from Marlborough. Carter worked for her father for most of her working life but has now branched out and created the successful Soho Wine ...

Friday wine with Di Donaldson, health and wellness guru

Di Donaldson loves the great outdoors, Pinot Noir and empowering people to feel healthy in body and mind. She has been a competitive wind surfer, the owner-operator of a chain of gyms in Christchurch, prior to the 2011 earthquakes, and did work alongside her winemaker husband Mat Donaldson at Pegasus Bay in North Canterbury. She has now begun a new business called Reyouvenate, which builds on a fasting retreat that has been running for 20 years, mostly via word of mouth. She has added yoga and m...

Friday wine with Matt Connell in Central Otago

Matt Connell doesn't believe in a life after this one and aims to live by a mantra of making the most of each day - "since this is the one life I've got". He wishes he could play the guitar and that he had met his wife earlier in his life but on the eve of vintage 2022 in the world's southernmost wine region, he is full of anticipation to what this year will bring in the wines he makes, which he will begin selling at the Aurum winery and cellar door, which he has leased.  Connell is a winem...

Wine of the week - Italian Petite Arvine

It's not every day that a wine seems good enough to totally blow me away and here's an absolute stunner from the dramatic Vallee d'Aosta in northern Italy where the Swiss white grape Petite Arvine grows at 550 metres above sea level on the Rovettaz vineyard. This wine has freshness to burn, is bone dry, full bodied and has layers of flavour from ripe grapefruit to fresh lemon juice to beautifully structured salty minerality. I usually avoid the 'm' word but it seems apt here. This drinks beautif...

Friday wine with Ata Rangi's Helen Masters

Aromas of freshly fermenting grape juice float through the crisp morning air as the sun peeks through the misty clouds in Martinborough this morning and Helen Masters is busy heading up the winemaking at Ata Rangi, one of the first four wineries in this remote rural village in the Wairarapa.Masters arrived at Ata Rangi in Martinborough in 1990, ideal timing to help over vintage when the founder Clive Paton and his partner, Phyll Pattie, had a new baby on their hands. It was Masters' gap year and...

Central Otago names its first wine GI

The name Bannockburn is the first formally registered Geographical Indication for wine in Central Otago.  This provides legal protection for the identity of the Bannockburn sub region, both in and outside  New Zealand. “Whilst the Central Otago brand name will always be first and foremost for the region, there has always been a concern that sub regions may also be exposed to misrepresentation," says Jake Tipler, Central Otago Winemakers Association general manager. “Our sub regions...

Winetopia dates confirmed

Winetopia is now in its seventh year and the two day event is packed with fun, food, music and talks as well as informal wine tastings, masterclasses and live music. The events include regular 15 minute sessions of wine options, an informal  guessing game on a mini scale, designed to allow wine lovers of all levels to have a shot at checking how well their knowledge stacks up in recognising aromas and flavours in well known wine styles.There will be approximately 250 wines at each event and...

Tuesday wine talk with Judy Finn of Neudorf Vineyards

Weekly wine talk is usually published every Friday but this week’s appears today due to the following week being on annual leave (at a yoga and fasting retreat). This great interview with Judy Finn took place today but is based on over two decades of having known and followed the wines that she and her partner in life and in wine, Tim Finn, produce in Nelson.This high achieving couple own Neudorf Vineyards, which they  founded in 1978 in Nelson's Moutere Hills, an enclave of excellence wh...

Russian vodka banned and replaced with Ukranian flag

The West Auckland Trust will remove thousands of bottles of Russian vodka and beer from its 26 stores today and replace them with the Ukrainian flag. The West Auckland Trusts owns 26 retail stores as well as hospitality venues throughout the region and will stop selling thousands of Russian made products from today in a move to show solidarity with Ukraine.The empty shelf space will display a Ukrainian flag, says Allan Pollard, Trusts chief executive officer."The immediate removal of Russian vod...

What does well aged wine taste like?

Pegasus Bay winery in North Canterbury has released three aged wines onto the market, all of them drawn from the temperature controlled cellars at the winery.The wines are part of the company’s Aged Release programme, which began in 2006 with wines that were 10 years old at the time. This year’s new Aged Release trio of wines includes the 2012 Pegasus Bay Pinot Noir, 2012 Pegasus Bay Riesling and 2012 Pegasus Bay Prima Donna Pinot Noir; an aptly named wine which is a blend of the best tastin...

Where can I find a good Pinot Noir? Six top drops

“I find Pinot Noir a bit of a mixed bag and it’s not always easy finding a good one – can you help?” It’s a common question from readers of this blog, friends and family, and it's a question that is usually answered with a “Yes and sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but it nearly always relates to price. Pinot simply isn’t cheap to produce so it’s rarely going to deliver excellence at a low price, despite a slowly growing range of very good wines under $25 and, occasionally e...

Friday drinks in Marlborough

Was it a punk streak or a craving for freedom? Possibly a bit of both led Hans and Therese Herzog to move to New Zealand in 1994 from Switzerland where restrictive Swiss wine laws meant they were unable to plant unauthorized grapes for many years, such as Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc instead of the uninspiring Muller Thurgau. The Swiss Government did liberalise its restrictive laws on grape varieties but the challenging Swiss climate remained, as did Hans’ dream to find more favo...

Digging the dirt on a new cellar door

Architectural drawing of the new Nga Waka cellar door from Vicky Read at Aspect Architecture...

Friday wine with Dom Maxwell of Greystone

Here is Dom Maxwell’s story. Bored at his desk job and in love with being outside led Dom Maxwell to his consider a career in winemaking because he was kindling the first flames of his passion for wine, when living in the UK. He is now the winemaker at Greystone Winery in North Canterbury, a place he began work in October 2004, initially in the vineyards there. Prior to that, he studied a one year post graduate  viticulture and oenology degree at Lincoln University. His first degree, s...

Woman in wine, Jane Hunter…

She took over Hunter’s Wines as owner and managing director in 1987 after the untimely death of her husband Ernie, who founded the winery in 1978; early days for quality wine in this country. Prior to her role at Hunter’s Wines, Jane was head of viticulture at Montana Wines. She has was born in South Australia and has a degree in Agricultural Science from the University of Adelaide. Her leadership and ownership of Hunter’s Wines has seen the company grow to at least five times its origi...

Woman in wine, Celia Hay

Celia Hay is the founder of the New Zealand School of Food & Wine, which she courageously relocated to Auckland after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. This unexpected shake put paid to both the building and the business she ran from it in the South Island’s biggest city, so she bravely put her three children and a bunch of banana boxes full of their personal possessions in the car and headed for the hills – the Bombay Hills. She has since forged a reputation as a food and wine educa...

Monday afternoon vino with Neal Ibbotson

The biggest extravagance and the best investment that Neal Ibbotson ever made was the engagement ring he bought for his wife, Judy, who shares in the life of Saint Clair Family Estate, one of New Zealand’s biggest and most successful wine producers. He got into the wine industry aged 50 and doesn’t do regrets but, if he did, it would be not getting into winemaking earlier. His mother lived to be 104. She was the inspiration behind the eponymous sparkling wine, Dawn, one of New Zealand’s...

Friday morning drinks with Tony Bish, king of Chardonnay

If Tony Bish has anything to do with his own reincarnation, he says he would like to come back as a game changer. Some might say he has already achieved this admirable trait by forging a name for himself as Hawke’s Bay’s king of Chardonnay and in building a family business in one of Napier’s most iconic and once neglected buildings, the National Tobacco Company at Ahuriri. He loathes greenness in wine, loves humility in people and has a life time motto to live life to the full because, ...

Monday morning wine with Ed Donaldson

Getting to know the people behind the wines and learning about their journeys can be as interesting as New Zealand’s best wines taste, which was the inspiration for this interview. It’s the third in a new series on this website, delving into the people behind the scenes. The following is a refreshing take on wine from the multi talented Ed Donaldson, whose taste in music and food is as legendary as his palate. Ed is the marketing manager and third eldest of four sons of the Donaldson fami...

Friday morning wine with Duncan Forsyth

Lifelong friends, a bloody Mary and a slushy machine all rate highly for Duncan Forsyth, of Mount Edward Winery in Central Otago. He was the first in New Zealand to sell high quality Pinot Noir on tap to restaurants. He rates southern Spain as his favourite wine region, among a couple of other regions, and finds working from home to be a bit of a distraction but life and work go on, as he shares this Friday morning in this website’s new wine take on the famous Proust questionnaire, which or...

Rapaura Springs puts Sauvignon’s best foot forward

Rapaura Springs is a winery owned by Ian and Rosemary Wiffin, Margaret and Brendan Neylon and John Neylon. The Neylon family have been instrumental pioneers in Marlborough’s green lip mussel industry and also now own substantial vineyard land in Rapaura and Dillons Point in Marlborough. They describe their vineyard land as prime and their top wines support this assertion with consistently high quality, dry styles and  medium to full bodied styles. This week I tasted their four new Sauv...