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Things we least expect

Joelle Thomson’s weekly blog about life, wine and other unexpected things It happens when you least expect it. When I finally realised my sister might not recover, or at least get a brief reprieve from her cancer, it quickly became clear that getting to see her in a remote part of Western Australia was a hard ask, at best. At worst, it was impossible to get there in time to say goodbye to her in person. The worst happened. Sue passed away this month and I never got to say goodbye in person,...

Autumn thoughts and wines

Joelle Thomson’s wines of the week are published every Friday, with occasional postings early – such as this week’s one… Vintage is in full swing here in Martinborough as I sit at my desk on a sunny, windy, sometimes cloudy, other times blue sky autumnal day. And Mother Nature really can be a bitch sometimes. The weather is living down to its reputation of being so dry that crops are naturally reduced by Mother Nature when she is at her harshest. The harvest this year is signific...

Courage and curiosity formed Chard Farm

Rob Hay first set eyes on the land that he planted in grapes at Chard Farm in August 1986. The arid slopes on the south side of Gibbston Valley were a merino sheep farm and locals regarded a vineyard there as an enormous waste of great farming country, but how times change. Yesterday’s lucrative farmland has become one of today’s most evocatively beautiful vineyards in the world. Chard Farm, for all its beauty, is not the only place vineyard that Rob owns or sources grapes from. When he p...

NZ Pinot Noir quality rising

Central Otago Pinot Noirs come in all shapes and sizes from light, fresh and fruity to deep, dense and full bodied because the diversity of this southernmost wine region in the world is enormous. Far from being a one trick pony, Central has at least four distinctive sub regions for grape growing, which is reflected in the wildly different styles of wine that come out of this vast area. In reality, there are more than four nuances and the areas include the Gibbston Valley (home to the earliest...

The story and wines of Mondillo in Central Otago

American born Domenic and Ally Mondillo developed 65 hectares of vineyard land in Bendigo in 2001 when they stuck vines on three terraces of arid land in this warm corner of Central Otago. It’s a long way from the United States to the world’s southernmost wine region but the couple pioneered their vast vineyard here because Domenic believed the warmer climate in Bendigo provided ideal ripening for grapes. The mix of grapes they grow reflects the region’s strong dominance in Pinot Noir; ...

New head for top Kiwi company

Wellingtonian Andrew Parkinson will take over as managing director of one of New Zealand’s biggest wine import and distribution companies this year, Negociants NZ. He will officially step into the shoes of managing director on 28 May 2021 when Clive Weston steps down after thirty years with the company, which includes Nautilus Wines of Marlborough in its portfolio. The news has a domino effect with Dean McHenry taking over from Parkinson as general manager of Negociants New Zealand (domesti...

Heartwood highlight from first Chardonnay Collection

Hawke’s Bay may usurp Gisborne’s spot as Chardonnay Capital of New Zealand yet. The second biggest wine region in the country (Hawke’s Bay) has just released its first official regional Chardonnay Collection with 12 wines, which I am tasting as I write. The region’s winemakers were invited to submit Chardonnays from the 2019 vintage to Cameron Douglas, a wine consultant and reviewer who also holds the Master Sommelier qualification. He was employed by Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers to cond...

Two new wine qualifications launch this year

Wine generates a cool $2 billion for New Zealand so two new courses are launching this year to transform our knowledge of this highly successful (and still relatively youthful) industry. Celia Hay is launching the new courses this year at the New Zealand School of Food and Wine, which she founded in 1995 in Christchurch, then relocated to Auckland in 2011 after the quakes. “The focus of the two new courses is building knowledge of New Zealand and international wine regions through tasting a...

New lease of life for an old Kiwi winery

One of Hawke’s Bay’s best known wineries has new owners and is once again entirely a New Zealand owned company. Mitch Plaw, director and one of the new Trinity Hill owners says he sees significant opportunities to grow Trinity Hill and looks forward to being part of its growth and development in the future.” The Hawke’s Bay based winery was founded in 1993 and was one of the best known early pioneers of wines made made from grapes grown on the now well known Gimblett Gravels sub-regio...

If you can’t beat it, join the rage for rosé

Southern French rosé may be the apex of dry, pale pink, light bodied wines to drink chilled in summer, but everybody is getting in on the act these days. The best of them live up to their refreshing promises but there have traditionally been few really high notes. This is changing, as a tasting this week of a $50 dry Spanish rosé (deep in colour but bone dry) showed me. There’s precious little of that wine so in lieu of suggesting it’s worth trying to track down something that’s impos...

Wines of the week – the full force of authentic wine

I often think of Riesling as a breath of fresh air but today, at an incredibly raw and moving funeral, at which I was a virtual guest, I heard a far more apt description. It is like the full force of the Wellington wind on a gusty day. It’s not for the faint hearted. Its strong personality, captured in its edgy qualities of high acidity, powerful citrus aromas, often tempered with a little sweetness, is one of my favourite expressions of nature in liquid form. As I wrote this week’s colum...

Vinous bout of self flagellation – Wine of the week

It’s been said that good things take time, which must mean that this first, slow column of 2021 was worth the wait because it has certainly taken far longer than this writer ever hoped. I blame Covid. If it hadn’t been for the global pandemic, my occupational overuse syndrome would have taken a lot longer to reveal the full force of its painful symptoms (and need for surgery), both of which came into their own in the small dark hours of morning, post Covid lockdown, when, instead of sleep...

Wine of the week – Giesen The August Sauvignon Blanc

It’s easy to understand why people question the value of products that cost significantly more than most comparable ones, especially when feeling the post Xmas pinch and other global uncertainties right now. And it’s with just that understanding in mind that I chose to begin this year’s indepth notes about wines on this site. It’s not that my budget is unlimited (far from it) but rather that this Sauvignon Blanc is created with the long term in mind, as much as it is about instant del...

A year to remember – and a wine to celebrate its end

The understatement of the year might be that 2020 is 12 months that we will all remember. As if anyone could forget. The past year has been a bitter sweet journey for some of us and just plain bitter for others. It’s with a heavy heart that I recommend a wine of the week for Christmas this year. Not only has the pandemic destroyed the lives of so many people who I never knew, the year of 2020 has seen a couple of very close family members become extremely unwell. Like the pandemic, it just ...

Hawke’s Bay’s first top 12 Chardonnay collection

Hawke’s Bay Wine has released a collection of 12 of its top Chardonnays, all from one vintage – 2019. This is the first time such a collection has been put together of white wines from the Bay, which is New Zealand’s second biggest wine region. The inaugural collection was put together via submissions which were blind tasted by Cameron Douglas, a Master Sommelier, who conducted a blind tasting of all wines submitted. The collection represents a range of Hawke’s Bay’s Chardonnay...

Museum wine highlights age worthy NZ Sauvignon

A new release of an old wine has highlighted just how far small steps can take a wine and how well Sauvignon Blanc can age, given half a chance. The wine is the 2014 Dog Point Vineyards Section 94. It has never had the grape variety on the label and, if winery founders Ivan Sutherland and James Healy continue to have their way, it never will. The aim is to highlight the site, not the grape. In keeping with their interesting and approach, which emulates the great classic European wines, they h...

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...