Tag: Gibbston Valley

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Looking Ahead

Mid-year dinner

July is your Club’s mid-year dinner. This July it is to be held at Le Bouillon Bel Air Restaurant in Tory Street, Wellington CBD.

  • The event cost is $85 per person, and there will be Club bubbles on arrival at the restaurant as usual.
  • You are encouraged to bring your partner – even if they are not a Club member, they are more than welcome to come along to both your club’s meals.
  • This July’s meal is a good time to get out those French wines that you have in your wine cellars to share with friends at the meal.
  • We don’t have the menu at this stage, as the restaurant changes its menus every two months, so you get variety and season’s pickings all through the year. We won’t know the menu until it comes out on 23rd June, but please look at the present menu for a sample of what they offer to patrons.
  • There will be a notice sent out separately that will detail the new menu and payment details. This will require a response by July 4th.

Please read an article featured in Cuisine magazine: Le Bouillon Bel Air – Cuisine Magazine – From New Zealand to the World: “Princely dining for Paupers – Entering Le Bouillon Bel Air one finds oneself set down in a fancy Parisian restaurant, circa 1895. A bow-tied, black-waistcoated waiter leads you past mirrors decorated in the same sinuous Art-Nouveau style as the pierced wooden room divide…. The menu, too, is inspired by Chartier, so rather than being subjected to culinary experimentation as a paying lab rat, expect a comforting sense of tradition.”

August

Gibbston Valley, Central Otago

September

TBC

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IMBIBE Mermaidary tracks the rise of the ‘heartbreak grape’ pinot noir

@April NZ House and Garden 

The ‘heartbreak grape’ Pinot Noir
The ‘heartbreak grape’ Pinot Noir

Pinot noir is a beloved wine variety in NZ, favoured for its elegantly balanced fruit, florals and lithe profile. It’s an elegant wine so is easy to love – but hard to grow, hence being nicknamed the ‘heartbreak grape’. Its thin-skinned and susceptible to disease, so it took brave wine-making visionaries to attempt to grow pinot here in NZ. Early champions of the wine were told that they were mad.

Luckily for pinot lovers, one such ‘madman’ didn’t listen. Irishman Alan Brady came to Central Otago and planted pinot on a small plot in Gibbston Valley, despite people telling him repeatedly it would had produced the first modern commercial pinot noir in 1973 from Canterbury-grown grapes).

There was no looking back and pinot planting in the region surged from less than 150ha in 1990 to 2000ha by the year 2000. Alan is respected as the godfather of NZ pinot noir and at almost 90 was present at the recent Pinot Noir Conference in Christchurch still with a thirst for knowledge and the desire to share what he has learned along the way.

The three-day event was an opportunity to be inspired by the NZ pinot noir journey and to plan the future for this exciting wine variety.

Today, NZ’s pinot plantings exceed 5700ha. Pinot noir grapevines like a cool climate and thrive in all wine regions from the Wairarapa south as well as in higher altitude regions of Hawke’s Bay. The largest concentration of plantings is in Marlborough.

There is no question that pinot noir is NZ’s most important red grape, so making this wine well represents a level of skill in growing and wine-making that not all wine regions are capable of, regardless of climate. It truly is a reflection of just how special NZ wine is and we want the world to know.

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2 iconic Central Otago wineries presented by Cenna Lloyd, Negociants

The wines tasted:

  • 2018  Two Paddocks’ Single Vineyard Pinot Rose
  • 2017 Misha’s Cantata Pinot Noir
  • 2018 Two Paddocks’ Pinot Noir
  • 2017 Two Paddocks’ Riesling
  • 2015 Misha’s Limelight Riesling
  • 2019 Misha’s Dress Circle Pinot Gris
  • 2018 Misha’s The Cadenza Late Harvest Gewürztraminer

     

For the 19 members and 1 guest that attended, this was a great tasting as evidenced by the fact that 101 bottles were ordered, such was the quality and pricing.

The low turnout was a disappointment but upon reflection, there were 3 couples overseas and another 4 people that contacted us beforehand and apologised because of sickness. These were 10 people that almost always attend and that, coupled with other regulars I have since heard were either out of town or sick, probably explains the low turn out. It can happen sometimes.

Cenna began her tasting presentation explaining the locations of Two Paddocks and Misha vineyards and as luck would have it, the wines presented covered the 4 main Central Otago sub-regions of Alexandra, Bannockburn, Gibbston Valley and Bendigo, Not covered was the area around Pisa Moorings or Wanaka.

She went onto explain that the reason for tasting the 2 Pinot Noirs first was so that any residual sweetness in our mouth from the whites would not destroy the delicacy of the 2017 Misha ‘Cantata’ Pinot Noir. All 3 red wines were excellent reflections of their styles but I especially enjoyed the savoury notes each had as compared to the dominate cherry flavours that tend to be more evident in other Central Otago Pinot Noirs.

The surprising wine of the night was Misha’s 2015 ‘Limelight’ Riesling. 4 years on, it still had a bright fresh citrusy flavour, This was a medium style Riesling with 34 grams/litre of residual sugar and I especially liked its delightful lingering finish. It’s hardly surprising to find later that wine writers have given this wine 5 stars. And to the surprise of everyone present, Jenny joyfully announced that she had finally found a white that she liked.

Misha’s 2019 ‘Dress Circle’ Pinot Gris was another of their whites to find great support from members. It had flavours of pear, citrus and spice, This is a very pleasing aromatic wine that will go well with Asian cuisine, which is hardly surprising, given that the owners worked in Asia for 16 years and set out to develop wines that would suit Asian as well as Western foods.

Of the two wineries, my personal favourite was Misha Vineyards with their theatrical named wines. So it was only fitting that the finale for the night was their 2018 ‘The Cadenza’ Late Harvest Gewurztraminer. This medium-sweet wine had aromas of apricot making it an
excellent match with fruit-driven desserts or with soft cheeses. As I said earlier, a great tasting.

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