A sobering article on the current status quo in the NZ wine industry....

Mahi winery was established in Marlborough in 2001 by Brian and Nicola Bicknell, and they make a small range of wines from hand picked grapes, and using wild yeasts.

On Tuesday nite, we hosted a dinner with Brian , and were treated to a delightfully entertaining evening, as Brian stood to introduce each wine, as we proceeded thru the courses.

Deeply knowledgable  and with complete passion for what they do, he was a pleasure to have.

I was told by a number of the attendees that Rick had excelled himself with the food - the matches worked really well, and I knew we'd got it right, when a number of people proclaimed different courses to be their favourite.

We'd used a Momofuku recipe for fried chicken, purely becos we're using David Changs cookbook for inspiration at the moment, and it was one of a number that Rick had turned too, when designing the menu.

Brian had asked for a copy of the menu last week, and we sent it thru not knowing that he had eaten at Momofuku in New York, so was intrigued to see the reference in the menu lineup, and understood from having read the cookbook himself, that the chicken dish Rick was planning on doing, was in fact a 3 day process, to brine, steam and then finally cook.

He made reference to the Momofuku connection on his Facebook ( unbenownst to us, becos I am steadfastly refusing to have a Facebook account.), and that caused confusion amongst those who had read it, and thought it was a alusion to something a bit odd and strange..

So the explanation that he gave, was one of many witty and entertaining stories that he weaved during the evening.

A pleasure all round!

I am currently reading a totally fascinating book, 'Liquid Matters' by Jonathon Nossiter, which is taking awhile, partly becos I'm finding it thoroughly engrossing and am trying to spin it out so it doesn't end anytime soon, and partly becos Mr Nossiter writes in an intense style, with meaty, chewy expressions that can take awhile to digest.

It could have as a subtitle ' How Robert Parker has stuffed the wine world', becos the author has little respect for the tyranny that American wine critic  Parker"s scores out of 100 have imposed on the wine world.

This article portrays a simliar bias....and rather more succinctly points out that its hard to get a perfect world.

I'm a big believer in the pendulum swing - in all things and at all times, we are in the process of swinging from one end of the pendulum to the other. Things never stay the same, and seldom do we achieve equilibrium . But however extreme some of the swings may be, at some point they will correct and start heading back in the other direction.

When I first started taking note of the wider wine community - probably back in the early 90's, Robert Parker was the undisputed king of judgement on wine, but increasingly over the last few years, dissent and carping has started undermining his perch.

A different perspective is gaining traction, and so the pendulum will start to swing back in the other direction....

We are heading up to Auckland for the day ( and evening - it would be a shame  not to fit a dinner in as well!) later this week, primarily ( apart from the lunch and dinner!) to meet up with Jean-Christophe at Maison Vauron, so as to get help with the French wines that I need to buy for the Jane Skilton tasting that we have coming up in a few weeks.

My knowledge of French wines, is only broadbased at best - and faced with a sea of french labels, I wouldn't really know where to begin, so I am looking forward to the guidance.

By happy chance a website I check out regularly had this delightful short video, of the tale of Two French Winemakers. I have also just started reading the book 'Liquid Memory', written by the same director responsible for the movie Mondovino a few years back. The book is about terroir and why place and personality matters in the crafting of wine, and how, if we are not careful we are going to end up with global and boring brands, that have nothing to distinguish them.

I found it fascinating therefore to listen to the sommalier at the end of this video, discribe the quite different personalites of the 2 wine makers featured, thru a tasting that he did of their wines. Made all the more exceptional by the fact he had never met either of the 2 men, but he could taste the nuance of their personalities in the flavours of their wines.

So terroir still rules I think, and wouldn't I love to have a palate as defined and calibrated as that gentlemans.....

Its nice when a wine we already have on the wine list gets this kind of accolades...  Once Rhonda gets back from America, and before the kitchen crew start taking their annual leave, Rick and I are hoping for a few days getaway, and Waiheke is where we want to head.

Be nice to actually go and visit the wineries, becos years since we've been on the island.

I have had my normal bookwork Tuesday, alleviated somewhat by a catchup lunch with some friends in town, that allowed a pleasant break in all that I needed to plow thru.

Now nearly time to head over to the restaurant for evening service - haven't been near the restaurant all day, so not too sure what to expect bookings wise, but don't doubt that Roz has every thing under control.

One of the last things I've had to do here at the computor was order some more of the Te Whare Ra Toru wine that we're using in the current cookschool series, becos we are going thru so much of it.

Toru is a blend - a mix of gewurztraminer, riesling and pinot gris, the aromatics if you like. Te Whare Ra are famous for their aromatics, in no small part becos their vines are amongst the oldest in Marlborough, and becos the winery is owned by 2 keen, and energetic young winemakers, who are doing great things.

They are exactly the sort of people that I like drawing attention too, when I'm looking for a wine to use for the duration of a cookschool series - but I confess I was a little apprehensive about using a white blend, becos I just wasn't too sure how it would be recieved.

With the cookschools, with both the food we do and the wine we choose to accompany it, we like to do something thats a little different, so as to stimulate people. And in doing that, we try not to be too didactic, becos that wouldn't be pleasant for anyone, but instead to present something that people may not have seen before.

So the Toru was a little bit of a punt. We are used to drinking blended reds - people think nothing of having a bordeaux style red, which is almost invariably a blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and maybe franc or malbec, but blended whites are a more unusual notion. ( I understand that a white like a sauvignon blanc can be labelled 'sauvignon blanc', even though it can have a small percentage of another grape variety in it, but it is marketed as one grape type.)

Toru is deliberately marketed as a blend - and I wasn't sure whether people would like the gewurzt dominate flavours or not. I think its a perfect lunchtime wine, but one of the lessons that discussing wine with lots of people over the years has taught me, is that just becos I like something doesn't mean it naturally follows that everyone else is going too as well. Would be nice if it did, cos would make my life alot easier! - but you can recommend a wine in the restaurant, and have it recieved very positively, and then get the totally reverse reaction to the same wine from someone else.

There are simply no guarantees.

So theres always an element of taking a punt when I decide to go with something a little different, and I have to say I'd been relieved about the generally positive response we've had to the wine in the classes so far.

So I didn't really need any further reassurance, but I can't say I was especially adverse to coincidently reading Jane Skiltons comments about Toru in the Sunday Times this weekend ( had time to read the paper, cos no one in the family was doing the Kaimai Classic!), where she was particularly enthusiastic. Jane Skilton is an MW and there aren't too many of them in the world, and she's a lady who's opinion on wine, I tend to listen too, so to have her unwittingly concur with what I'd already decided, just meant a nice pat on the back. Just one of those little 'aha' moments, if you like.

Becos of course none of us need the experts to tell us what to drink. ( re an earlier blog of 10 Feb 2010 in which I link to 2 opposing articles written by wine writers as to how much influence they should have on peoples choice).  I would simply hate the idea of only buying what wine experts recommended, but that doesn't mean that I'm totally adverse either, to the notion of having an opinion of mine collaborated by someone who's palate I have a lot of respect for.

This link to an article on the significance of female winemakers in the NZ wine industry comes as no surprise to me.

Two of my favourite wineries that we list at the restaurant are the Richardson lineup and also Odyssey, both of which are made by committed, extraordinary women - and I quite often make that comment when I'm asked to recommend a wine.

Once I've poured a sample and the customer has agreed that yes it is delicious, I will say somewhat factiously that thats becos its made by a woman. 

I am acutely aware that there's a whole host of other factors that come into play in the making of a quality wine, other than the gender of the winemaker, but it never does any harm, just to poke the borax occasionally, and remind men that we, women can do anything, and can do it pretty bloody well into the bargain!

Learnt something tonite! The Flemish bissous on the cheek 3 times, whereas the French only do it twice. Didn't know that. We have some Flemish businessmen in for dinner, one of whom we have seen many times over the years, and I now get greeted with a kiss placed on alternate cheeks 3 times, when he arrives.

We watched when we were in France, how all social interactions start with a bissous on 2 cheeks - even when waitress'arrived at work, they would greet the chef like that, and we were fascinated by the degree of time and effort that was taken to note other peoples arrivals and departures - 'bon journee' is something that all shopkeepers would say to you as you left their shop.  I rather liked the implicit formality - and the sense of awareness that comes with it.

All curious - well at least I think it is!

Been a busy sort of evening, with people arriving that I haven't seen in a long while, and lots of wine to unpack and put away, and more instructions for the wedding on Saturday to get my head around, so have stayed over at the restaurant as long as I was needed, and now retreated back to my desk to sort a few things here. And have Masterchef to catch up on - we came over to the house too late last nite after the Yalumba dinner to want to sit thru it, so will watch  that shortly when Rick appears.

The Yalumba dinner last nite was the start of our Winemakers Series for the year, and a little different in that we were show casing an Australian company. As I said in my introduction to everyone, I've noticed a distinct trend in the restaurant over the last few years for New Zealanders to quite consciously order NZ wines.

We appear to have totally lost the cultural cringe of years gone by, when we used to assume that something from overseas was going to automatically be better than a domestic product, and instead Kiwis have belatedly embraced their home grown wine industry with a chauvinism that sometimes becomes a little too all embracing I feel.

There is a wide, wide world of wine beyond Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, and Central Otago Pinot Noir, and sometimes I wish more people would realise that. That of course, is at the same time as I am immensely proud of what our wine industry is achieving, and am for ever championing it in the restaurant. Most of the wines I drink tend to be NZ - although my palate is widening and I am getting the opportunity to try more and different varieties. A process I thoroughly enjoy.

I look on wine as being a huge field - one I'll never cover in its entirely in my lifetime, but one that I enjoy experimenting with and trying new things. And I guess that is what I wish for some of my customers - that they move outside their comfort zone, and try something a little different periodically.

Australian reds used to represent cheap, heavy quaffing wine - but what we got to try last nite were 2 exceptional examples of Aussie red at its absolute best - The Menzies, Cabernet Sauvignon, and The Octavius, a Shiraz. Superlative wines.

We also had a Chardonnay from the Eden Valley, fermented with wild yeasts, and a viognier, likewise from the Eden Valley. Both wines were quite different from the styles I'm used to drinking, and it was therefore fascinating to listen to Alan Hoey, the Manager of Operations for Yalumba talk about each wine.

Yalumba was established in 1849, and has been owned continuously by the same family. I joked last nite that that is my dream for Somerset - but maybe we should have had more children if that was going to be a serious ambition, becos somehow I don't see either of our daughters stepping into our shoes in years to come.

It is an extraordinay winery, with an amazing story - and from the emails I've been getting today, it would seem that people really enjoyed the experience of listening to Alan talk about the business and its history.

The kitchen stepped right outside their normal food to prepare some wonderful flavours to go with the wines  - all of which added to a special evening.
All good fun, and a useful learning experience for all of us.

I am not inherently a fan of the classification of wine or restaurants into lists of the best - becos I have problems with the variability of the criteria used, and the type of people who set themselves up to pass judgement.

But having said that, I nonetheless keep an eye on such lists out of curiosity, and while I don't let it necessarily affect my own personal favourites  ( had a glass of the Te Whare Ra Pinot Noir last nite, when sitting down with friends,  and I reckon NZ pinots don't get too much better than that...), its always interesting gist for the mill. Something to mull over...

This list  categorises some NZ pinots into star ratings based on the consistency of their performance over the last few years, and makes for interesting reading I thought. I'm familiar with some but not all of the wines - and one of  my problems with such a list, is that some of the wineries mentioned, produce more than one pinot label.

Two interesting articles in The Guardian on the vexed subject of wine criticism - both from a different perspective, but both written by men who have the very serious qualification of an MW.

Tim Aitken argues that with the plethora of wines around in the market place now, people need guidance about what to choose, and look to the experts to provide some pointers.

Tim Hanni  on the other hand argues that alot of that guidance is entrenched snobbery - that makes people reliant on other peoples estimations, rather than their own palates.

I have witnessed alot of wine snobbery over the years - behaviour that I personally find somewhat distasteful, and for reasons I don't fully understand, the wine industry tends to attract more than its fair share of those sorts.

I guess I'm enough of a contrarian to not want to believe everything I'm told, and therefore my wine knowledge, such that it is now, has been built up over the years from a wide variety of sources.  And I certainly hope that just becos someone with letters after their name, tells me that something is good,  I won't unquestioningly accept that as fact, but will instead allow my own critical faculties to determine my own opinion.

But then wine doesn't intimidate me.- I guess I've been around the industry too long. Quite the contrary. I find it a fascinating subject - huge in both its diversity, and its ability to be different things to different people. Unlike a mathmatical equation, there is never one correct answer - both rather a countless array of possibilities.

All interesting....

I get daily emails from  tizwine.com, which is a roundup of news from anywhere in the world relating to the wine industry, and usually makes for interesting reading.

This link is to a US based article, predicting the trends in the industry going forward for the next 10 years.

I've always admired Jancis Robinsons ability to call it the way she sees it - so many supposed critics are little more than PR mouthpieces, with no original grunt.  This lady has always struck me as been made of sterner stuff.

This article talks about the importance of shipping and storing wine without significant temperature variations - a subject close to my heart.

Interesting to read in it that there is a trend now, in these energy conscious times to head back to underground storage of wine, becos the bonded warehouses that are above ground, go thru conspicuous amounts of energy to maintain the required even temperature.

I have wanted an underground cellar for years - probably right back to the start of our time at Somerset in fact. It has just always made sense to me- although sometimes I wonder just how much the dollars I have tied up in wine stocks will jump, when I finally have adequate storeage for lots more.

We had plans drawn up a couple of years ago - and it is a developement that will definitely happen, now we own the land on the far side of the restaurant, but we are realistically not expecting the bank to be too enthusiatic in the current market, and figure we should bide our time just a titch.

But it will come - and reading articles like this just confirms for me that it makes sense, and thats cool!

People need to realise just how seriously some of our reds are starting to be taken on the world stage. This isn't the first time that 'our' Gimblett Gravels bordeau style reds have come out very well in a blind tasting with the top Bordeaux, and it is confirmation of just how good they're getting...

I was going to head over to the Mount this afternoon to clear my head after what has been a reasonably full on couple of days, but the weather is squally and unpredictable, so I've opted for a mooch down below with the dogs, figuring that shelter is closer at hand should one of those heavy showers come thru, then it is on the top of the Mount.

We did a cookschool this morning, and it usually takes me an hour or so to redirect my thinking after one of those, and I've found that canine company works perfectly well to achieve that.

We had Anna Flowerday from Te Whare Ra Winery, at the restaurant last nite for a Winemakers Dinner, and it proved to be a very happy combination of flavours from both the wines and the food.

Anna has grape juice rather than blood running in her veins - having grown up in the McLaren Vale, in a grape growing family, and then going on to marry a fellow graduate from Roseworthy who's family are also grape growers, but this time in Marlborough. She and her husband Jason, bought Te Whare Ra, one of the oldest planted vineyards in Marlborough in 2003, and are building on the tradition the winery has always had for aromatic styles, while also being unafraid to create their own legacy.

We had the good fortune to be invited down to a lunch at Roquette restaurant in Whakatane on Monday, and the car trip down with Anna who'd just been picked up from the airport gave us a chance to get acquainted. She is passionate and knowledgable and incredibly enthusiastic about her industry, and I knew we were going to get along just fine!

Lunch at Roquette was lovely - they were using different wines in the Te Whare Ra lineup to what we had planned for the next nite, with the exception of the pinot noir and the botryitised riesling, proving the depth and strength of the winery.

We don't often get the opportunity to go to these special meals at other restaurants, so its always a bonus, and an especially nice one when the meal was as good as it was on Monday. Some of the people from the restaurant came to our dinner last nite - great to be able to return the compliment, although I didn't envy them the trip back down the coast when the weather turned nasty later on in the evening.

I even promised one of their chefs that I'd email thru the recipe for the souffle that Rick used for dessert. I had thought he was completely mad doing souffles, for that number - becos there is no safety net. If they don't come out of the oven after 20 mins cooking looking spectacular, then you're stuffed basically. He'd taken the oven from the house over to the restaurant , so he had 3 ovens that he could use, and he had it timed so they were coming out of different ovens, at slightly graduated time intervals, so we, the front staff had time to literally rush them to the tables, before they began their inexorable descent. I don't believe in running in the restaurant no matter how busy you may be, but we weren't far of a trot last nite, getting them all out to the tables as fast as we could. And unfortunetly becos of the pressure to get them out once they started coming out of the ovens, I wasn't able to hang around long enough to take a photo to show you what I mean by how stunning they all looked. You had to be there...

We'd learnt the technique in France - or more correctly I had, in the classes I took some of our cookschool attendees to,  in a beautiful local restaurant Auberge Lou Peyrol, while Rick stayed back in the house with the others. When I reported back to Rick what Phillipe had done with the souffles he told me it wasn't possible - but I had photos to prove it, so he grumbled a bit, listened to the others who corraborated my story, and waited until he got back to NZ to play around with it. He's done it now for a number of dinner parties at home, but I thought it was quite a leap of faith to extrapolate that out to a formal dinner at the restaurant. Obviously I need to have more faith in my husband!

The noble riesling was sumptuous with the dessert, and I learnt listening to Anna, that the reason I've always preferred botrytis wine to late harvest, is becos botrytis infected grapes retain acid to offset the sugar, whereas late harvest are just a sugar hit. I didn't know that.

As always after these dinners, we come away with a heightened appreciation of what someone else is aiming to achieve, and for us and those who work with us - that adds immeasurably to what it is that we do.

Have just had a meeting with Andrea from Moca, our website designers, and Rachel from Digital Dove, who is currently working with us on our logo and branding - and have realised that theres a whole language out there that I don't understand. They talked about fonts and exchanging files and other bits and pieces that might as well have been in double dutch for all I could comprehend.

 And that reassures me in a funny kind of way that, as with most things in life, when  you need something done to a high specification, you're better to get in the experts, simply becos they know, and can do stuff that you can't. One of life's little lessons that sometimes is useful to be reminded of,  becos as a small business owner its easy to fall into the trap of attempting to be a jack of all trades, and thats not always a good idea, I've discovered.

But I digress, and what I really intended to write about was a subject I am vastly more knowledgeable on which is champagne. I love champagne, so was naturally very enthusiastic when Sandy from Lion Nathan first brooched the idea with me, nearly a year ago, that we do a comparative tasting between the 3 French champagne houses that they import - Nicholas Feuillatte, Gosset and Duval-Leroy.

This evening has been a long time in the planning, but all came together in a rather delightfully sparkly fashion on Tuesday evening I have to say.

Customers got to try 13 different wines on the nite - a Brut N/V for the preliminaries, and then when they sat down at tables and got into the serious stuff, we served 4 flights - N/V, Rose, Vintage, deluxe. Opinions varied widely in terms of what people preferred - proving unequivocably that there is no 'right' or 'wrong' when it comes to tasting wine.

It was a unique chance to taste some very special wines and we are very grateful to Lion Nathan for helping make it possible.

The kitchen came up with some great food matches - interesting small plates of flavours that worked really well with the bubbles. We'd worked hard on the ideas, so it was lovely to have them so well recieved, becos some of it was bit different.

But the icing on the cake of the evening was, without doubt the indominatable Jane Skilton MW, who Lion Nathan brought down to lead us thru the wines.

She was brilliant.

Deeply knowledgable as you would expect from a Master of Wine ( a qualification that is incredibly hard to acquire - I think theres something like only 40 female MW's throughout the world), she was a natural and delightful raconteur. Easy to listen too, and extremely humourous, with a wit that spiced up the evening considerably and helped create a jovial atmosphere that we all thoroughly enjoyed. Very cool!

It was interesting logistically, pouring and getting out the wines to the tables - each person had to have 3 glasses in front of them, in the right order at the right time, then we had to serve food, clear that, clear glasses, replace and repeat. A postively balletic performance...

I'd lain in bed the nite previous, going over in my brain as I'm wont to do, just how the structure was going to flow, becos of the differences to the Winemaker Dinners that we normally do, and decided somewhere near 2am that we'd need to order more champagne glasses, so rang Tauranga Party Hire at first light, and they very obligingly got some couried over from Hamilton cos we already had everything they held in stock.

Pleased to be able to report that everything went smoothly, and everyone, staff included, went home with smiles on their faces, knowing that they'd got to try something that doesn't come along that often.

Simpson Print did a magnificent job of compiling all the wine notes for the various wines in a beautifully presented booklet for guests.

The packaging for the deluxe wines was truly extraordinary - a veritable artform in itself.

The wine chiller with some of its precious contents...

We got the chefs out to help pour the final flight, so we could keep up with the clearing and...

 Many years ago, a customer sold us 2 bottles from about 9 consequetive vintages of Stony Ridge Larosse, and we did a evening in the restaurant, tasting the wines. Steve Bird led the discussions as I recall.

For me it was a fascinating opportunity to taste the same wine through the years assessing the variations, subtle in some cases, and more pronounced in others.

It is one of my missions that when I finally achieve my dream of an underground cellar that will hold top wines at correct temperatures, then I will be able to offer our customers flights of vintages of good wines, rather than just the single vintages that we currently do.

One of our suppliers is holding an auction of single bottles of Coleraine - the flagship red from Te Mata- from the 1982 vintage through to 2007. An extraodinary range of top NZ red wine.

I don't think we'll be biding becos single bottles of wine don't really work for our requirements. I did once also get the opportunity to buy some aged stock of Coleraine from the private cellar of another good customer, becos he'd decided he had more than he was going to drink in the years left to him - and that sold very quickly in the restaurant becos we were able to pass on the very reasonable rates that we'd bought it at.

One day, when we've got the cellar capacity, maybe....

 A new mockumentary that looks promising, becos it pokes the borax at the pretensions that build up in the wine industry - something that I trip over occasionally.

Most of the wine makers that I know personally, are down to earth, and very pleasant people, but regretfully, so much else associated with the wine industry, can be pure unmitigated snobbery, and I just don't understand why that needs to be the case.

I've read a couple of books over the last year on the subject of the growth of the Californian wine industry in general, and the Mondavi family specifically - both of which made for fascinating reading, and which to a degree are mirrored in NZ, with our sudden ( ie over 30 years, as opposed to centuries in France), growth in a wine industry and concommitant wine culture.

It is almost as if to validate the lack of heritage, and to build their own sense of prestige, some of the worst of the traditions from Europe are adopted, to justify price and brand. To give credibility if you will, by those inclined to believe marketing hype, rather than trusting their own palates.

Which can make for a considerable amount of bullshit - and this trailer would indicate a movie that highlights some of the extremes.

Should be good fun...

A gloriously sunny still day. Have just got back from the Mount, where I went alone cos Rick headed out on his bike. The Mount is full of families, with the school holidays currently on - and it's always fascinating to note the diversity in response that parents get from their children as they attempt to either weedle or coerce them up the Mount. Some kids obviously love the exercise, but there are some who object in the strongest possible terms, extremely vocally...

We had the Dog Point Winemakers dinner last nite - and thoroughly enjoyed the evening. As expected Ivan and James from Dog Point were completely laid back and delightful company. The introductions that they give to the wines and the winemaking process always gifts the evening an added level of interest, becos it gives us all invaluable information that you can never derive from a bottle label.

The wines are elegant and superb with food, so we tried hard to pick up the flavours notes in each wine, and attempt to match those in a complementary fashion with the dinner. I have a great book that we refer to often when we're doing this sort of work -'What to Drink with What you Eat' by Andrew Dornenberg and Karen Page, a cleverly laid out series of lists of flavours that work with different wine.

Given the diversity that occurs in the wine world however - chardonnay for instance, covers a huge range of styles and flavours,you can't just rely on that, we also had to taste and narrow down what we thought our options were. A process we sat down and did after a cookschool last week, spending a very pleasant hour or so, tasting and discussing and refining the menu. All good fun.

We try not to get too serious about these evenings - but we're also aiming to do something thats different from our everyday menu also, becos alot of the people who support us on these nites are very good customers, and its nice to use the opportunity to give them something different to what they ordinarily have at Somerset.

I'm also acutely aware that taste is a very personal thing - and combinations and flavours that may work for Rick and I, who's palates have become very aligned over the years, may not necessarily appeal to everyone.
One of our good customers last nite felt that the chardonnay would have gone better with the pork dish, and the Section 94 with the crayfish rissotto. We don't take that as a criticism, but rather an expression of someones opinion, becos there is really no right or wrong - just what suits individual people.

And certainly people seemed to enjoy last nite, which was a pleasure for us to observe.

As someone said leaving -'just what we need in the middle of winter!'

Absolutely.

About to head over to the restaurant for a cookschool, but one of the advantages of my day starting at 6.30am these mornings to feed the puppies, is that I get an extra hour at my computor to read incoming stuff,  which means I'm feeling organised. Always a nice way to face the world.

Need to pop accross the road first to get some mail away ( not everything is electronic yet), but thought I'd do a quick link to this article on criticism of some of Robert Parkers wine critics accepting payment for some of their wine travels.

Robert Parker is a behemoth in the world of wine critics, revered and reviled in equally strong amounts, so part of this just be a deliberate attempt to put an indelible stain on his reputation, but critics should be seen to be squeaky clean at all times I would have thought, if they want to retain any degree of credibility.

A somewhat sobering appraisal from Jancis Robinson on the state of the Australian wine market -

We had a winemakers dinner with Steve and Caroline Bird, from Bird Wines last nite. Steve had a number of wine styles that he wanted to showcase, so we delved into 'The French Laundry ' cookbook for inspiration for a series of small courses, specially designed to go with each wine in a progression. A recent acquisition from Amazon "What to Drink with what you eat" by Andrew Dornenberg and Karen Page proved a useful source of some flavour ideas.

Always a subject of debate, this idea of matching. Do you go for like with like, or do you look at contrast so as to throw certain flavours into relief. And then you have the added complication that wine flavours will vary when drunk  with food. In discussion with a good customer last nite, who's palate I have a lot of respect for, he pointed out that he and his wife had initially preferred the 06 of the 2 pinot noirs poured, when they first tryed the wines, but then they reversed their decision after drinking the wines with the duck, and felt the 07 was better with the food.

Its that kind of debate that always makes for interesting chat, becos theres no right or wrong - each person will have their own preferences, and I find it all quite fascinating.

Guests worked their way thru 6 different wines, which equated to 6 different glasses per person ( obviously!),  not to mention a  water glass for each person and the martini glass that we served the cherry parfait for dessert in - nearly 500 glasses in total, that had to be washed polished and put away. Knowing that we were up for a pretty major undertaking I'd suggested to Courteney that she might like to come and help ( she has wheels to pay off...) , so she spent the evening in front of the dishwasher in the bar, 'doing' the glasses. With a little help occasionally of course. But I think she was definitly over glasses by the end of the evening.

And then today she happened to arrive home just as we were at a crucial stage in the mating performance of Kazza - a visual experience that my daughter summed up somewhat succinctly as 'yuck!'I doubt the trauma will be permanent though!

Mating dogs - thats a subject worthy of another whole blog.....

Jancis Robinson is an English wine critic who I've long admired. I remember watching a BBC production years ago, that she did about apreciating wine, and decided back then that I liked her direct and honest approach. There is so much flowery codswoddle associated with the subject of wine, that its always somewhat refreshing to listen to someone who calls it the way they see it.

I pay attention to her recommendations - her website is a fascinating resource, and her books make fascinating reading.

Shes in NZ at the moment for the Pinot conference down in Central Otago, and I thought this interview was a very postive endorsement from a lady who some years ago, was less than complimentary about NZ pinot noirs.  Our pinot noirs are constantly improving and that  must bode well for the NZ wine industry as a whole, which by natural extension is good for all of us in the food and wine business, I figure.

The more standards are lifted, the more we all gain...

I have one daughter out on the river training, the other is racing in Te Puke, and Ricks just headed out for a quiet hour on the bike to clear his head. As you do. I've been bottling red wine vinegar, and am now sitting at my computor chasing up those silly little things that always seem to throw you quite disproportionatly this time of year. I've had a wine delivery just arrive, and instead of the 6 cases of Savy, pinot gris and pinot noir that I ordered, I've had 6 bottles arrive. And then I went looking today for some more cellophane bags to package the gelatine sheets that we sell in, only the shop is no longer stocking them, and after a quick flick to another couple of possible outlets I've resigned myself to having to brave Gilmours to get them. A shop I never enjoy venturing into.

So. To clear my head, I thought I'd sit down, before I head over to the restaurant, and have a spiel about the dinner we did with John Hancock from Trinity Hill on Tuesday - a neat evening. John and we go back a long way. When we first opened here at Somerset he was the winemaker out at Morton Estate, and was always extremely supportive of us-even if it did mean some evenings we didn't get home till the wee small hours of the morning. He's a man who knows how to chill and have a good time.  We've been down to the winery in Hawkes Bay to do catering - a logistical feat that was made all the more exciting by the fact that our icecream kept getting softer as our source of power was constantly rerouted to the band.  There are a group of people who came down with us to help, all of whom have strong memories of trying to roll rapidly melting icecream...From such experiences you learn!
We have stayed in contact with John over the years, and always featured his wines on the restaurant wine list, partly becos of the personal contact, but also becos we are big fans of his wines. For years I've associated big chardonnays and stylish syrahs with John, but as he proved conclusively in a tasting with the staff before the dinner - the selection of wines now available under the Trinity Hill banner is hugely comprehensive.

John, post staff tasting, but pre dinner, with a cleansing ale, holding forth on something in inimitable John style!

For this dinner he wanted to focus on some of the lesser known wine styles  so we used Viognier, Arneis and Tempranillo - grapes originally from France, Italy and Spain - and attempted to match them with tapas style food, so as to keep them in context.
We've been waiting with some considerable interest for the first pork to arrive from Free Range Farm Ltd, a new venture run by some delightful English people up Hume Rd in Katikati.  Pigs fed with local avocados and kiwifruit, and farmed in healthy free range conditions feels like just the kind of supplier we want to support. We wanted small pigs and we got them - and Rick spent an interesting few hours figuring out how the Italians bone for the porchetta that you see in the markets in Tuscany.

The meat cooked

The oven we hired to cook most of the meat in - becos we didn't want to tie all our ones in the kitchen up for the kind of time period it was going to take to cook it all.

  As we'd hoped, it proved  to be a beautiful match with the tempranillo.
John constantly travels the world telling the Trinity Hill story, and yet even after all those repeats he never fails to make it all sound fresh and exciting, possibly becos it is his life and his passion, and his desire to keep learning and experimenting and improving is very evident.
He is also delightfully blunt and to the point - and I value enormously the more private catchup chats that we have occasionally, when I can get his take on any number of things that I may have read or heard recently. John doesn't bother with niceties at such times and calls it the way he sees it, painting a picture in bright relief. An aspect of the man I always enjoy.
I looked around the restaurant at one point and realised that of the 70 people that were there, 20 of them had been in either France or Italy, or both with us. So there was a reasonable amount of catching up happening between tables too, which I always take as a very positive sign. Rather than being little isolated islands sitting in the restaurant, tables mesh and mingle creating a warm buzz that flows thru the whole restaurant, and is, I kind of figure, what it is all about!

Tables vacated at the end of the evening - ready to be moved and reset for the cookschool in the morning. As one service ends, you start focusing on the next and its requirements...

I'm exhausted! First cookschool in the Christmas series today, and the first one in any series is always cause for some preliminary anxiety as we sort the timing of everything ( ran over time today, but knowing my husband he'll have eliminated that extra time by the Friday class,) and await the reception of the food.  We never take for granted that its all going to be liked. Anna Robertson from Silver Bubbles had arrived very early, to set up the table decorations, becos we're using her services in this series to help inspire people to create something beautiful for their table. I've talked about Anna's talent in previous blogs, and I'm going to take a series of photos over this series to document what she does for us, becos she indicated today that things will change as time goes on, becos she doesn't like repeating the same thing too often. Sounds a bit like the process that happens with Ricks recipes, over a series - theres always a degree of evolution as we progress thru the series ...he had a sponge cause him grief today, so he went back into the kitchen to repeat the recipe this afternoon to see where he had gone wrong, and surmised as a result of that, that the shape of the bowl that you beat the eggs in over heat, makes a  difference becos it impacts on the amount of air that gets whisked in. Hmmm...

We didn't get home till late last nite becos the entire restaurant had to be reset after the winemakers dinner. We'd moved every table in the place to accomodate everyone in the one room, and even though things were 'cosy', they worked really well.  Michelle was everything I expected her to be - erudite, witty and totally in command of her subject. She introduced each wine, and brought the wine making subject alive for us all - in a way that adds a whole extra dimension to your enjoyment of what is in your glass. The kitchen had created some lovely matches with the dishes, and everything moved along smoothly and nicely, with a roomful of good customers, who were there to enjoy themselves. And in doing so, make it very easy for us...

Case loads of wine arrived, becos we are now going to feature the winery on the wine list for the next little while, with a special page description, and cellar notes for each of the wines. And thanks to our affiliated company, Somerset Wines  that has the offlicence I'm also able to now sell to people to drink at home, so the stack of boxes is already greatly diminished. ( Which is good - becos until I get my underground cellar, storage space is always at something of a premium.....)

Rick looking much too relaxed for my liking - at the start of the nite! Its amazing how much easier it is for both kitchen and front of house to only have to concentrate on the set menu. Sometimes when we do these functions, we have half the restaurant doing the wine and food match, and the other half eating normal a la carte, and oblivous to what is going on in the back room. That puts huge pressure back on the kitchen, both in terms of prep during the day, and also with timing during service. Everyone eating the same thing at the same time, makes it absurdly easy, by comparison to a normal full dinner service.

Something being plated that required reasonable levels of concentration from some of the kitchen team...

Time to go and pour myself a glass of wine and put my feet up I think!

An article in the regular TizWine email caught my eye today. Theres a documentary being screened on one of the Australian TV channels that we may get to see in NZ at some time, which describes in detail some of the scams happening out there in the wine world , in terms of additives been added to wines, and corners been cut all to keep costs down.

Proof enough for me to stay with the producers who I know and like and whose credibility is beyond reproach.

Thought the comments on the French Champagne pricing were interesting. We stock a Jean Jacques Vigreux Frere label, which is one of the 'garagistes' labels, that produce stunning bubbles on a much smaller scale to the large brand names and for appreciably less cost. There is alot of money tied up in  the perception of 'brand', and the Champagne houses know how to work that. We used a Bollinger Special Cuvee as one of our wines in Wine Options recently, and I was genuinely stunned that no-one picked it as a French bubbles.  So you do have to ponder whether alot of the catchet is tied up in knowing what you are drinking, rather than the taste of what you are drinking.

Hmmm...

19 September

And then as a follow up, the predictable ( to a degree) outrage from the wine industry - proving I guess that there are 2 sides to every story. And as I have a natural aversion to a lot of the hyperbole espoused in the media, I think it would be fair to say I straddle the fence on this one. I am quite sure there are examples of heinous cheating - but to tar the industry as a whole on the basis of a few rogues, is pushing common sense a little too far in the direction of sensationalism I suspect.

Back in 2004 we did two weeks of cookschools in an idyllic farmhouse in rural Tuscany, Italy - Podere Fineri. It was our first trip to Europe ( if you over look the fact that I was born in England, but came out to NZ when I was younger than 2, so have no recollection...), and was therefore a huge experience for us on a number of levels.

Fineri was in the rural countryside just outside the small village of Asciano, that you struggle to locate on most maps. Better known, and about an hours drive away, was the extraordinary hilltop town of Montalcino, around which are grown the sangiovese grapes specific, to the now famous wine, Brunello. Typcially of me, I'd read a novel based in Montalcino to give me a feel for the history of the area. Have just gone looking in my bookcase for that book, but can't find it, which is a shame cos I'd have liked to have passed on the name. It was a great depiction of  the lives of the ordinary people living in the area back thru the ages, caught in the ongoing wars between the dynasties of Siena and Florence.

We spent time in Montalcino with both weeks of cookschools, and once you got beyond the tourist orientated streets, it really tugged at my heart strings. Somewhere I'd like to go back to one day...

Over the last 20 years Brunello has risen to dominance as a great wine - red, and heavy and made 100% from a clone of Sangiovese. Much trumpeted in the American wine media, its become a trophy wine. However - the area that the grapes are grown is quite small, and the grape itself if tempermental, and doesn't lend itself naturally to the smooth, sweeter styles that have become generic thanks to the slavish following of  writers like Robert Parker.  Over time the Italians were presented with the problem of demand in excess to what they could supply, and like any enterprising company they found ways to up their volume levels or smooth out their wines to meet the international palate. Which would have been OK if they had said what they were doing, but they continued to market the wines as true Brunellos,  100% sangiovese, even though  its now been discovered that they contained shiraz, merlot and a number of other grape types.

Some writers continued to write glowing reviews of the wines ( just encouraging me in my opinion, that so much of what is written about wine is pure, unmitigated drivel!), while others got suspicious, and started asking questions. Suffice to say, there is now a government backed full scale investigation going on, in which about 50 of the 100 or so wine producers in the Montalcino area are involved. And its got complicated and nasty, and will end up costing alot of people alot of money.

Have just finished reading an indepth and fascinating blog on the subject, which includes a couple of lovely photos of this gorgeous Tuscan town. ( Don't panic when you hit Italian, scoll down past the introductory bit, to the photo of Jancis Robinson, and you'll pick up English.)

Sad when some peoples malfeasance ends up adversly affecting all those in their orbit, becos everyone ends up been tainted by association.

Read this...

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/2008/02/09/diner_returns_35g_fake_bottle_of_wine/5005/

its an article on a bottle of wine that gets returned in a restaurant in London, by a diner who doubts its authenticity.

One of the electronic wine emails I suscribe too, sends me interesting titbits from all around the world, and I thought this was an article worth passing on :http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120069310588201343.html?mod=weekend_leisure_banner_left .

I tried the taste test in the article and came up with a 6, and was a little nonplussed to see that one of the wines I should try were Sauvignon Blancs, cos as a grape type they are probably my least favourite. He didn't however mention NZ S/blanc in the list, so maybe the others are not as astringent as the ones we get here...

I was curious about his idea of listing wines on restaurant menus in degrees of intensity - becos I've been pondering for a while a better way of classing our wines. The way we do it at the moment - divided into grape types - a customer unfamiliar with the wines is very dependant on staff for advice, and I sometimes wonder if with wines like Rieslings especially, I shouldn't be listing them sweet to dry - becos the sugar levels can vary hugely.

Hmmm...

One of my New Years resolutions is to treat this blog as an opportunity to just flick quick ideas out there. Links that I enjoy, that I think other people might and should therefore pass along.

I've tended over the past year to regard the writing of blogs as a form of dissertation, which needless to say makes the process a little more longwinded, and therefore  less likely to happen quite as regularly. So in 2008 expect more short, sharp blogs that are simply me passing along a contact or link that I think may be of interest.

Have just read the following blog ( froma newsletter that discusses all things Italian- www.italianwinereview.com) and thought the comments that the erudite Italian winemaker made about the wine media and large companies controlling distribution were particularly interesting...

http://iwronline.blogspot.com/2008/01/dozze-case-basse-and-more-being-138th.html

After we have done a cookschool at Somerset, we sit down in the restaurant with the attendees and eat for lunch what it is that Rick has prepared, together with a wine  that I've chosen . I usually make an effort in sourcing that wine to come up with something a little less common, so that people get the opportunity to try something that maybe they wouldn't have done so in the ordinary course of events.

Because we have been here awhile, and because we have profile as a business, we've built up an extensive number of contacts in the liquor industry, all of which means I sweep with a wide broom when I go looking for a particular wine. We even have an account with Lion Nathan, a behemoth of a company, who's credit application forms required that I signed over all our assets, our childrens inheritance and possibly our grandchildrens inheritance, by way of personal guarantees!We do however also deal with alot of small wineries who don't have a a retail presence - relying on restaurants to get their brand out into the public domain.

When we opened Somerset back in 86, we were BYO only, as were most of the restaurants in town. The 1989 Sale of Liquor Act finally brought a grown up attitude to dining out in New Zealand ( with one of two regretable anomalies..),  and helped create the profusion of licensed cafes and bars that we now quite naturally take as part of our normal landscape. They simply weren't there 25 years ago, becos the licensing laws were so archiac and rigid.

We got our on license in the early 90s - fuelled in part by the comment made by a number of our business clientele, that they felt it looked naff to bring important overseas customers to a restaurant, along with the wine in a brown paper bag. Its a concept that is virtually nonexistant overseas, and these guys worried that it made them look cheap in the eyes of people they were trying to impress.  So for that reason, and for the very obvious one that it was a needed and natural extension to the business, we got the license ( after putting in seperate loos, and getting permission from neighbours, and increasing the number of carparks, and...)

The first wine list had 8 wines on it: a bubbly, 3 whites, 3 reds and 1 dessert. Last nite I counted the wines on our current list out of interest and got:

 8 Bubbly

9 Riesling

4 Gewurztraminer

6 Pinot Gris

4 Rose/Chenin Blanc

7 Sauvignon Blanc

14 Chardonnay

17 Bordeaux style red

4 Grenache/Temporanillo

9 Shiraz

15 Pinot Noir

9 Dessert

Its grown just  a titch. And will continue to do so, so my storage capacity increases.

The license we have is an 'on' license, meaning that we are legally allowed to sell alcohol for consumption on the premises, but not anywhere else. ( As an aside, that means technically, that if you had a bottle of wine over dinner at Somerset, and decided to err on the side of caution and not drink it all before the drive home, but asked instead for us to cork it and give it to you to take home, I would be legally required to deny you that reasonable request. Bollocks I say - I'd far rather customers drove home safely and drank the rest of the wine when it suited them, and its not our practice to say no, although I have heard of businesses that have.I am aware that in doing so, I am operating outside a strict interpretation of the law, but I believe I'm acting ethically and sensibly in doing so.)

I used to get lots of enquiries during cookschools about the wines I was serving, and where people could access them - to the point that it kind of dawned on me, to apply for an 'off' license so that I could act as a wholesaler and on sell the wine to people myself - in that way I'd be operating within the law, and wouldn't run the risk of jepordising my exisiting on license. Reasonably straight forward kind of concept I thought. Silly me! 18 months later, as I've worked my way thru the labyrinth of interpretation and bureaucratic nonsense, I am now the proud pocessor of an off license.

But!

A restaurant is not legally allowed to simultaneously hold an 'on' license and an 'off'license, so I've had to set up a seperate company with a seperate bank account to run the off license, and that ironically, was the easy part of the process.! Suffice to say we are there now, and thanks to  a delightfully  ( and most unusually!) pragmatic local Liquor Licensing Officer, we are now able to operate as a wholesaler. Note the word 'wholesaler". Thats good in the sense that I can onsell wine at fantastic prices, but bad in the sense that the restaurant is not a retailer, and people can't drop in to buy a bottle of wine, as they would at a wine shop, to take to a dinner party. We're not allowed to sell like that.

I will sell the wine thru the cookschools - from now on a note will be attached to the recipes, with the bottle and case price of the wine we're drinking in that class and people will be able to take it home with them then, or organise for us to deliver it later. And in addition, I am going to have a 'Somerset Wine' page on the website ( Moca are working on it now), where people will be able to purchase the wines listed over the internet, or thru a personal email to me.

We are using Odyssey Rose, in the current series ( one of my missions in life, is to reintroduce people to the delights of a good rose in the middle of the day. The average Kiwi gets sniffy at rose, associating it with Mateus and Cold Duck, when in fact, it is a delightful wine, much drunk in France,) and I'm now in the delightful position where I can legally sell bottles and cases of it to people for them to take home. Thats good for our customers, good for me, and good for the wine producer!

My aim is to slowly build up the list. What I sell will be particular to what I source, and geared towards our existing customers. The Odyssey rose was the first step; I  have a meeting regarding  adding the wine page to the restaurant website next week, and hopefully in time for Christmas purchasing  we will have listed a range of French and New Zealand bubbles, that I can access at great prices ( I have that list done, and if you wanted it faxed or emailed thru in the interim, let me know!), because bubbles is kind of what I associate with Christmas. And then next year, I  plan on making a special feature of a different winery every month at the restaurant, and concurrent with that, will add those wines to my off license list- gradually extending out what we have available.

Wine is a big part of what I do in the business, so this feels like a very  comfortable and logical next step, and I'm rather relieved that the powers that be have finally agreed! We just need to bring them on side with the kitchen extensions cos the underground cellar is planned for under that, and I need more storage space....

David and Pam, owners of Kina Beach winery in Nelson, approached us a couple of months ago to see if we'd like to do a winery dinner with them. David had come to see me before last Christmas to do a tasting with his wines - and I had been so taken with them that we'd listed all 3, a sauvignon, chardonnay and pinot noir.

Doing a winemakers dinner is always a chance to focus on the wine and food matching, but we are also very conscious that it is first and foremost about the wine, and we try and come up with food ideas that will complement and add nuances to the wine flavours, without needing to take centre stage.

For this dinner we were doing comparative tastings of two vintages of each wine; the 2006 and 2007 Sauvignon, 2005 and 2006 Chardonnay,  and 2004 and 2005 Pinot noir. I especially enjoy vertical comparisons - becos the variation can be quite pronounced sometimes, all of which I feel adds to the intricate fabric of understanding that is wine appreciation.

David was a natural and relaxed raconteur - and spoke elegantly about their wines and what they are hoping to achieve with the vineyard. As always, when listening to someone who is passionate about their craft, you can't help but get enthusiatic in response.

It was a fun night! - a bit tense in the kitchen at one point as they were trying to get entrees and mains out to the tables in the other part of the restaurant, who weren't part of the wine evening, plus find enough bench space to start plating up the prawns with potato ravioli as the first dish - but we got there!

One of the aspects of this business that gives me, personally the most satisfaction, is dealing with people who  I like and respect - sometimes it can feel like a real priviledge to have an association - and certainly that is how we both felt after that evening.

I hope we get to do it all again!

We are in the process of getting an offlicense, purely so we can sell via mail order, some of the wines that we get for the restaurant that aren't readily available to purchase from other retail outlets. The process to acquire this off license has been long and labourious, and we are not as yet there. When we do ultimately achieve it, we will have a seperate webpage for wine discussions and sales, and I hadn't anticipated saying much about wine until that happened. However.

I was lent by good friends who've just got back from Europe a couple of DVDs. One was on the history of Venice, cos they know of my fascination for that unique city, and the other, which has inspired me to write this email is: Oz and James Big Adventure. Oz Clarke, a well respected wine expert from Britain, takes James May ( from the car show " Top Gear"), on a road trip thru the main wine regions in France. Oz is an expert, and James prides himself on  being someone who enjoys a glass of wine but who has no time for all the peripheral pontificating that can go on about it. He's a natural cynic,  whereas Oz is one of those naturally exurburent characters, so passionate about the subject of wine, and so keen to submerge James ( who he hardly knows at the start of the series.) in the whole culture of French wine.

Its a fascinating journey - and as someone who is neither a wine ponce, nor a complete ignoramus, I have to say I learnt alot about French wines, but even more, I delighted in the process and the interplay between these two quite different men.  Needless to say, the scenery made my spirits rise, knowing that we will very soon be travelling down some of those same roads. (There is major debate in our house hold at the moment over whether Courteney should be taking her bike to France - and I couldn't help noticing that in virtually every road scene there was a bike somewhere in the background...)

If you are in any way interested in wine, I would suggest that you will find this  delightful  viewing. A wine rep friend who I lent my borrowed copy too, has just emailed me to say that she's ordered a couple of copies from the BBC website - I'm not sure if its available in NZ or not.

Strongly, strongly recommended!!