Joelle Thomson

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Wines of the week – four South Island Pinot Noirs

Joelle Thomson’s wines of the week are published every Friday (or Monday, on occasion). Read on. What are old friends for, if not to share some of life’s most affirming moments, often with great wine (or for some, perhaps a beer) and food. One of my oldest friends reminded me this weekend of many shared memories that had sprung to mind after a challenging year of ill family members, interesting work challenges and the global pandemic to contend with. One memory that we haven’t shared, u...

Marlborough’s newest fizz launches today

End of year parties have a lot to answer for and I’m not just talking about the hangovers, if that’s where you thought this story was heading. The silly season has piqued my interest in and craving for a glass of absolutely kick ass champagne. We drank a fair few bottles at our Christmas work party, just over a week ago, as you’d expect we would since the ‘we’ in question is the team from Wellington’s biggest independent wine store. Anyway, now I can’t get those delicious yeasty...

A Memorial to Mike’s great wines and great mind

Mike Weersing passed away in his sleep on 12 November and will be sorely missed by all who knew him, leaving a legacy of great wines from the rare, isolated, 2.2 hectare vineyard he established in 2000, in North Canterbury. His desire was to make great wines modelled on the best from Burgundy and every detail of his vineyard pays homage to this dream. He spent years researching soil types, climates and the aspect of the land on which to plant the grapes he most wanted to use to make wine. Thi...

Wines of the week – It’s Sauvignon but not as you know it

To say it’s been a hell of a year is an understatement for most, including those of us who remain gainfully employed, but there are silver linings as well as the dark clouds brought on by Covid-19. One of the silver linings is being able to spend more time working from home, most of that time incredibly productively spent too, and when it comes to wine, another silver lining is the high quality of vintage 2020 in New Zealand. This year’s wines are steadily pouring out of wineries now, sta...

How wine forges connection – the new 2019 Felton Roads

Joelle Thomson’s wines of the week are published every Friday You never know who you’ll run into on the way to the dog park and today I ran into a fellow dog owner and wine lover, who has a cellar full of so many Felton Road wines that before I knew it, another hour had passed and we standing in his wine cellar looking at row upon row of beautifully cellared wines. We met via our dogs and, because we’re in Martinborough, we’re now on a first name basis. Martinborough is like that. A b...

Mainstream wine launches new organic range

Organic wine is gaining momentum with the launch of Stoneleigh Organic, which includes four wines all certified by BioGro New Zealand. Winemaker Jamie Marfell describes the ethos as simple and says that with minimal intervention it is possible to create wines with lifted aromatics and fresh, fruit-forward flavours, which also tick the organic certification box. The new Stoneleigh Organic range includes four wines so far. Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, rosé and Pinot Noir are all widely availab...

Otago wine company imports new French bubbly

It’s not exactly a case of a coals to Newcastle but there is an irony about the newest imported wine available in Central Otago. It’s a Pinot Noir from France, only in this case it’s sparkling. The Maison Vitteaut-Alberti Cremant de Bourgogne comes from Burgundy, is made 100% from Pinot Noir grapes and is a blend from vineyards in the Cote de Beaune. It’s made the same way as champagne but can’t be called champagne because it comes from outside the famous region of the same name. Th...

New skincare combines hemp and vine health

Kirsty Harkness has found hemp to be a successful alternative to seaweed fertilisers in her Marlborough vineyard....

Smelling the roses right under our noses

The heading of today’s blog wasn’t intended to rhyme but perhaps it’s my brain processing the podcast I listened to this morning called How to Fail. It was an interview between podcast journalist Elizabeth Day and poet Claudia Rankine, who talked about what connects and divides us. The podcast How to Fail talks a lot about how to succeed, which led me to thinking about how we think about both failure and success. It’s an incredibly apt topic right now with referendum results passing a...

Why you should drink Marlborough Pinot Noir

Why is Marlborough Pinot Noir so good?  It’s a question that was answered – hopefully – at Winetopia in Wellington this year with a session called, funnily enough, Why you should drink Marlborough Pinot Noir. The answer lies in the migration to hillside vineyards over the past 20 years by winemakers such as Auntsfield, Dog Point Vineyards, Greywacke, Corafin, Giesen, Nautilus and many others. “Over the last 20 year we have learned how and where to grow premium Pinot in Marlboroug...

Wine of the week… Syrah is booming or is it?

The phrase that someone’s bark is worse than their bite has taken on new meaning this year with a young puppy now part of the family and the words sprang to mind again last week when visiting Hawke’s Bay. At home I’m hearing a lot of bark and while away in the Bay, I heard a lot about Syrah, only to discover that many winemakers find it tougher to sell than the more ubiquitous Merlot. This is a shame. Syrah has far greater long term potential than mellow Merlot, much as it can impress w...

Hawke’s Bay Wine Show pays tribute Corban and Chardonnay

I have often wondered what A A Corban would make of New Zealand wine today. The Lebanese immigrant arrived in 1892 to a county reeling in drunkenness and planted some of the first seeds of the now highly successful New Zealand wine industry in West Auckland but Corbans (sic) Wines is but a memory to most New Zealanders. So, for those of us who grew up with this once iconic and powerful wine brand, it was a welcome tribute to see one of AA’s descendents given a place in the Hawke’s Bay Win...

Winetopia worked wonders for morale

How was Winetopia? A winemaker asked me last night at a friend’s house at the end of a long weekend which I spent hosting eight sessions of indepth wine sessions at the event. The sessions ranged from 20 minute blind tastings to masterclasses, stage talks and even a food matching session with Jamie, chef and owner of Olive Cafe in Cuba Street, Wellington Talks included Why Dry Riesling Rocks (and I included a medium dry wine to show that ‘dry’ is a relative term when it comes to the bal...

New old wines… Wines of this week

It’s always a great experience tasting wine with Mat Donaldson, one of New Zealand’s most talented winemakers and, as fellow wine writer Bob Campbell MW has described him, one of the most thoughtful. This comes across in all the wines he makes at the family owned Pegasus Bay Winery, but this week’s top drops are aged Pinot Noirs that have been re-released this year as part of an intentional cellar programme that the family began in 2006. These wines show that New Zealand has many strong st...

Winetopia on in Wellington, 9 to 10 October

Social distancing may have made vintage 2020 one of the most memorable on record but it is also showing itself as one of the best vintages of the past four years, something that 55 wineries will show in the glass this coming weekend at Winetopia in Wellington on 9 and 10 October and then again in Auckland on 30 and 31 October. The event was originally scheduled to take place in July but was postponed due to Covid-19 and organisers have been on tenterhooks, wondering if it would proceed, due t...

New Cloudy Bay Sauvignon released

It’s no secret that 2020 was an interesting (insert whichever adjective springs to mind first) vintage. As if Mother Nature doesn’t throw enough challenges at winemakers, Covid-19 came along right on cue as most winemakers were either about to start picking their grapes or were already in the middle of it. The silver lining this year was a little benevolence on the part of Mother Nature, who provided dry weather throughout the most crucial part of the grape growing season; from Christmas ...

New Central Otago wines from Coal Pit

Central Otago is the third biggest wine region in New Zealand but it is made up of small wineries as well as the big names. Coal Pit is one of the smallest and is situated on a hillside in the coolest, last sub region to pick its grapes in a typical year, namely, the Gibbston Valley. Not that there is anything typical about Central Otago, which is the world’s most southern wine region and one of its edgiest. The edgy aspect is what gives this region a lot of its appeal. That and the majesti...

Wine of the week from southern France

French holidays may be off the agenda for a little while yet, due to the current global pandemic but dreams are free and the wines from the sunny south of France are also a lot more affordable than a plane fare and time spent there. It’s not quite the same thing… although a few sips of this lush dry white could easily lull you into thinking you’re sitting in the sun dappled courtyard of a chilled Mediterranean village. That was the thought in mind when choosing this wine of the wee...

Wines of the week… Is $365 too much to pay for a bottle?

Would you ever spend $365 on a bottle of wine? If so, what would make you dig that deep? It’s a question I’ve been pondering a lot lately, after tasting Yalumba’s new red, The Caley, named after Fred Caley Smith, a grandson of Samuel Smith (founder of Yalumba Wines) and a man whose wide global travels helped horticulture and viticulture in South Australia so much that he was made an honorary horticultural commissioner for the South Australian Government in the late 1990s. This year, Yal...

New releases from Hunter’s Wines

This year marks the 38th for Hunter’s Sauvignon Blanc, which makes it one of the oldest wine producers in Marlborough and one of the first to put Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc on the world’s wine map, so to speak, in 1986 with its oak aged Sauvignon. Hunter’s remains family owned and run by Jane Hunter OBE and Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for services to viticulture. She is also a recipient of the UK Women in Wine Award. The winery continues to make Sauvignon Blanc today bu...

Wine of the week… A family milestone in Marlborough

This year marks the 40th for Daniel and Adele le Brun, who have pared back their plans to celebrate on a large scale due to Covid-19. The pair pioneered sparkling winemaking in New Zealand in the early 1980s, producing high quality  méthode traditionelle (the same winemaking method as champagne) from the start. They released their first bubbly in 1985, only to run into anti-French sentiment in the wake of the Rainbow Warrior sinking in New Zealand. “But Adele turned a negative into a ...

Cloudy Bay appoints new head winemaker

Cloudy Bay has appointed Nikolai St George as its new senior winemaker following his past four years at Giesen Wines as chief winemaker in Marlborough “Cloudy Bay is one of the flagships of Marlborough, with a long history and an uncompromising approach to quality,” says St George, “They re still seeking to grow and improve, which is what drives me and attracted me to Cloudy Bay.” He will work closely with Cloudy Bay’s technical director Jim White and the existing winemakers, Dan So...

New pop up cellar door in Martinborough

The new owners of Nga Waka Wines are opening their new pop up cellar door wine facility on election day this year, Saturday 17 October. Nga Waka Wines has made small volumes of high quality wine since 1993. Founding winemaker Roger Parkinson  continues to steer the winemaking under the new(ish) ownership of Jay Short and Peggy Dupey, who have significant expansion plans in place to increase both their vineyard area, wine production and also at a new winery cellar door, scheduled to open ...

Wine of week… organic white burgundy with the X factor

It’s often said that we only regret the things we don’t do and the list of those is too numerous to name. Some of them I’m happy not to do. Getting up at 5am to exercise sounds great in theory but not being a morning person makes me a tad dubious about it. As does buying extremely expensive wines when I can taste the diminishing law of returns quite clearly in the wine analysis I do. But this week my perceptions were altered and I realised I haven’t been drinking enough grea...

A (great) old winery with a new lease of life…

Mountford Estate has always more closely resembled a southern French villa more than a Kiwi winery. One imagines it on the outskirts of a small village somewhere in the sprawling Languedoc where the dry and sunny Mediterranean climate gives visitors the impression that life has slowed down several notches, due to the heat and relative ease of growing all manner of edible food and grapes that anyone ever wanted. And there is a similar climate at Mountford, in summer at least. The long, languid...