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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...

Organic Week Aotearoa… Wines of the week

It’s more than a buzzword or a nice idea. Organic wine – certified organic wine, that is – is now an imperative part of every New Zealand winemaker’s current thinking. It has to be, if they want to share in the marketing of New Zealand wine overseas by New Zealand Winegrowers, but that’s another, much longer story than organic wine itself. Organic Week Aotearoa kicks off tomorrow, Saturday 5 September, and here are my three new favourite organically certified wines for this week. Or...

FAWC announced in Hawke’s Bay

Fancy a weekend away? Since long distances are off the cards, a short one may appeal at this year’s Fine And Wine Classic in Hawke’s Bay from 6 to 15 November. The FAWC!’s summer programme launched this week with a full programme and tickets online now. The programme this summer  includes chefs Josh Emett, Jason Kim of Gochu, Kate Fay of Cibo, Renato Ribiero of Maloca Boteco and also Master Sommelier Cameron Douglas. Hawke’s Bay chefs are also participating and include James Beck...

Top drops under $25 from Blackenbrook

Low-fi, minimal intervention, gravity fed, organic, vegan friendly and biodynamic are among the latest buzzwords in wine circles globally right now and Blackenbrook Vineyard in Nelson ticks several of these boxes, with more on the way. The owners are Daniel and Ursula Schwarzenbach, who have 20 hectares of vineyard planted between Nelson and the Abel Tasman National Park. It’s home to seven different grape varieties, all growing on Moutere clay soils in Tasman Bay, 500 metres from the sea �...

Top (and pricey) new Pinot Noirs from Rockburn

Today marks the release of two of New Zealand’s highest priced Pinot Noirs from Rockburn Wines in Central Otago. They both come from the 2019 vintage; a great year for New Zealand Pinot Noir, to judge by the early trickle of wines slowly but steadily finding their way onto store shelves, both in real life and in the increasingly virtual one. If you can’t pop into a store to buy a bottle, it’s easier than ever to buy online, without having to risk contact with others or the inconvenience...

Wine of the week… a whole bunch love affair

It’s been a New Zealand Pinot Noir week here in Martinborough with a deluge of new releases and aged wines from producers to show how well this great red wine can taste, both as a young wine and when aged. There is no question that New Zealand Pinot Noir is growing in quality as well as in a diverse range of styles, with many winemakers opting to use a portion of whole bunches in their ferments in lieu of high proportions of oak during the wine’s maturation. I like the inclusion of whole ...

Marlborough Wine Show announced

Wine Marlborough has announced the dates for its annual wine competition and it opens entries to the 2020 Marlborough Wine Show on Monday 31 August. The show is the largest regional wine competition in the country and is to be sponsored by QuayConnect this year. The show will highlight Marlborough wines made from Sauvignon Blanc,  Pinot Noir, Rosé, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and Gewurztraminer. This year’s focus will also be on the diversity of wines made in different microclimates around...

The first new Bollinger for 12 years

If you can’t visit the village of Ay in Champagne right now, then Champagne Bollinger will come to you. At least it would have, if you were among a handful of wine writers living in global lockdown earlier this year. Lockdown continues to take away many of the freedoms we take for granted. Popping out for morning coffee, newspapers and crosswords before work, for evening drinks, day time at the office, socialising and even meeting with work colleagues takes on an allure for some. It was def...

New wine reviews from Nelson

Nelson is the northernmost wine region in the South Island of New Zealand and, as it’s tucked away in its sunny enclave on the west coast, it often slips off the radar of many wine lovers. It’s not a big region, home mostly to family owned wineries and wine brands, such as Ian and Jeanne Bathgate’s Old House Vineyards. They own the land and grow the grapes but employ local winemakers to produce the wines for them. This week they sent me their latest wines to review, which I’ve done be...