Published NZME Regional Newspapers Tue 12 Jan 2016 By now so many of you will be back at work, watching the clock and making little sculptures out of blu-tac at your desk. You’ll be shuffling paper, sticking PostIt notes to things and walking purposefully from your desk to the staff loos every 30 minutes … Read More
Columns
Three decadent dessert wines
Published NZ Herald Sat 9 Jan 2016 Just when you’re thinking about hauling your carcass into some active wear and going for a jog, wait, shuffle around the block; you see a wine column singing the praises of those luxuriously decadent dessert wines you love so much. Curses… Johanneshof Noble Late Harvest Marlborough … Read More
New style, plenty of substance
Published NZME Regional Newspapers Tue 5 Jan 2016 Bubbles causes a real raquet… For the next fortnight, fans of backhands, forehands, faults and aces, loves, deuces, advantages, serves, volley’s, outs and on-court tantrums will be going bats and balls over the ASB Classic in Auckland. Usuallly tennis is the domain of pimms and cucumber … Read More
New taste for the sav gurus
Published NZME Regional Newspapers Tue 29 December 2015 Sauvignon Blanc. It’s the fuel that drives the engine room of our wine industry. So it stands to reason that the home of the world’s first International Sauvignon Blanc Celebration should be Marlborough, New Zealand’s largest wine region. That’s right, between Feb 1-3 2016, the movers … Read More
Trouble with the Santa list
Published NZME Regional Newspapers Tue 22 December 2015 Why do I do it every year? My offspring, now in their teens, will supply me with a ‘Santa List’ on December 1st. It’s the rules according to them. I go through the lists and secretly cross off all the R18 X-Box games and DVD’s (sorry … Read More
Christmas chardonnay time
Published NZME Regional Newspapers Tue 15 Dec 2015 It’s about this time of year when people ask me what my predictions will be for what we’ll be drinking in the next twelve months. I hate questions like that. I’m about as good at seeing into the future as I am at singing “Our Love … Read More
3 syrah stars
Published NZ Herald Sat 12 Dec 2015 Four weeks ago the 24th Annual Hawke’s Bay Wine Auction collectively raised $141k for Cranford Hospice by auctioning off rare wine lots. Mucho big bucks were dropped on syrah, a rising star from Bridge Pa… Selaks Reserve HB Syrah 2013 $22 Sourced from the Selaks ‘Home’ … Read More
A triple treat
Published NZ Herald Sat 5 Dec 2015 Tween television appears obsessed with churning out programs featuring perfect-looking kids striving to become a ‘triple threat’, meaning they need to sing, dance and act better than anyone else in order to be a STAR. In winemaking you need great ground, great fruit and great skills – … Read More
Dive into a boutique bottle
Published NZ Herald Sat 28 Nov 2015 Make this the weekend you step sideways from commercial brands and dive into something on the boutique side of the bed. These will have you walking the stride of pride the next day… Collaboration Aurulent Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay 2013 $35 Hawke’s Bay-based winemaker Julianne (Julz) Brogden is … Read More
Summer scorcher calls for bubbles
Published NZME Regional Newspapers Tue 1 Dec 2015 I’m writing this column from the comfy new couches at an air-conditioned Napier airport on a day that the weather boffins have predicted will hit thirty-plus degrees. Updates on Facebook are flooding my feed with photos from the dashboards of friends’ cars with outside temperatures of … Read More