Durvillea Wines

A new wine label from Marlborough, New Zealand

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Fettuccine, prawns and prosciutto

March 10th, 2010 · Dean Betts, durvillea, recipe, sophie

After Jane’s post yesterday I had a flick through Jason’s copy of The Fish Market, this is a fabulous recipe book, and after photocopying many of the recipes I decided on one to cook for dinner last night. Pg 148 for those of you who own the book.

Fettuccine

2 Tbsp Olive oil (Jane’s olive oil)
1 Tbsp Chopped shallots (which came from one of our Growers yesterday!)
16 Prawns (for 2 people)
150ml Cream
2-3 slices of Prosciutto (I used Streaky bacon as it was what we had at home)
A pinch of Chilli
Cracked black pepper
6 leaves fresh basil, juilienne
1 Tbsp fresh garlic puree
1 packet fresh fettuccine
2 Tbsp grated romano cheese (I used hard parmesan)

Place olive oil, shallots and prawns in a pan over medium heat and saute for 1 minute
Add cream, prosciutto, chilli, cracked pepper and half the fresh basil julienne
Saute over medium heat until cream has reduced by half the volume, I added half the cheese here too
Cook fettucine while cream is reducing
Add cooked fettuccine, toss to coat, add garlic puree and plate
Garnish with the rest of the cheese and the basil

This recipe was very easy to do, and the best thing was it did end up looking like the picture- always pleasing when cooking! Paired with our Durvillea Pinot Grigio it was a great match.

Thanks to Dean Betts and his Fish Market Cook Book, I look forward to making more recipes out of it!

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Crafty work down on the farm.

March 9th, 2010 · Dean Betts, astrolabe farm, durvillea, harvest, marlborough wine and food festival, recipe, sophie, the girls, vintage

The approaching harvest of the grapes is beginning to dominate life. Nick has been working hard in the vineyard cutting out green fruit and putting on nets. There is a rising sense of anticipation. We are beginning to watch the weather carefully and notice the cooler nights. So far so good.

As well as the grapes, the pears and apples are now ripe. The swans wander up from the pond and eat the fallen pears and we are enjoying them straight off the tree. We also had a great plum crop and Simon made plum kasundi. In the past we have made a tomato kasundi but Simon cut out about a 1/3 of sugar to account for the higher sugar levels in plum. The recipe we use is Annabel Langbein’s and goes particularly well with courgette and feta fritters. These fritters are a great way to use up courgettes that are probably more correctly called marrows.

Simon has also ventured into jam making using up the apricots that could be saved from the birds!

Winemaker jam making

Domestic activities have been a feature of our summer. Libby, Meg and I decided to take up crocheting over the Christmas break. We bought wool, borrowed books from the library and struggled. I did know how to do this once and the plans for an afghan rug may at this point be beyond our skills. It was a lot of fun and I intend to keep trying.

So it was with some relief when Arabella decided to make cusion covers for her flat. I am much more comfortable with the sewing machine. Generally I have not fulfilled my role of good mother by teaching my daughters to sew. However my hopes have been rekindled with Meg and Arabella showing a bit of interest. It was great fun whipping up soft furnishings with Arabella. Appliquing creatures on top of the floral fabrcs was particularly successful. We even tackled recovering a lampshade of an old standard lamp she had painted. Adding fringeing pleased me greatly.

Making cushions

From this I carried on to make aprons for us to wear for the wine and food festival. I love to wear an apron. Arabella found some seaweed fabric online and we had some pockets screenprinted with the Durvillea artwork. Simon took one look and said that the seaweeds on the fabric were from the Northern Hemisphere! The girls looked fab lined up behind the counter at the Wine and Food Festival in their pinnies.

Super pinny model Sophie

This domestic activity culminated in a fantastic bread making session. A couple of weeks ago we had a visit from Toni and Dean Betts. Dean is a chef who started The Fish Market restaurants in California and then moved to Auckland and started The Anglesea Bar & Grill. In discussing food, wine and life Dean offered to show me how to make a a flatbread and baguette loaf using a no knead recipe. Wow! We mixed up the dough and the next morning Dean came back and we shaped and baked , topping the flatbread with olive oil, rosemary, and garlic from the Farm. It was so much fun,  extremely satisfying and very delicious. Dean’s generosity as a chef and teacher was greatly appreciated.

Dean making the bread

Jane and Dean's bread

Over the next week I will post the recipes…………

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Lanzafame Restaurant due to re-open this weekend.

March 2nd, 2010 · durvillea

Award winning Chef John Lanzafame is reopening his restaurant this weekend at 88 Crown Street, Woolloomooloo NSW 2011. Phone  (02) 9331 8881

This restaurant has a Durvillea twist, with all 3 Durvillea Wines on the list and glass pours, along with our Durvillea label being printed on the glass out side windows, and being panelled along the side of the bar.

John Lanzafame was former executive chef for Hugo’s Management, working primarily in Kings Cross at Hugo’s Lounge and Hugo’s Bar Pizza. In mid 2008 he opened the doors to his new restaurant ‘Lanzafame Trattoria’ in Sydney’s Star City Casino and in 2009 is finalising plans for the opening of his signature restaurant this weekend in the eastern suburb, Woolloomoolloo of Sydney.

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Marlborough Wine and Food Festival

February 15th, 2010 · durvillea, jane, meg, sophie

I have been down in Blenheim this weekend for the annual Marlborough Wine and Food Festival. We had a really good day on Saturday, the festival day. This year we had two tent sites side by side, one each for Astrolabe and Durvillea. Manning the Durvillea tent were Arabella, Jane, one of our Waghorn cousins – Claire, me (Meg). Sophie was also on the Durvillea table most of the day while flitting over to the Astrolabe tent from time to time.

We set up the tent the day before and were very pleased as all the hard work Jane had put in making decorations was well worth it. We went for a green and brown palette for the Durvillea stall and a pretty gothic dark look for the Astrolabe side. The big pile of real life Durvillea seaweed and the handmade pinnies were a particular hit.

We were a little worried when we arrived on site to very heavy rain. It is local Marlborough lore that it never rains on festival day. However the rain cleared up about eleven and the rest of the day was very sunny and hot. Since the temperature was so high our chilled white wines were very popular. There was particular interest in the Pinot Grigio with punters interested in the choice to go with Pinot Grigio rather than the more usual Pinot Gris. There are two reasons that we call it Pinot Grigio, one is that we sell wine in the UK where they are more used to seeing Pinot Grigio’s and the other is a stylistic decision as the winemakers are aiming toward creating a wine more in the Northern Italian style as opposed to a French style.

I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk to people about our wines. It is equally nice introducing the wines to new customers who haven’t heard of us before as it is meeting self described “Durvillea fans”. We also got a chance to catch some of the musical acts. Sophie went to watch Ladi 6, Henry, Claire and I were impressed with Liam Finn and Jane discovered Gin Wigmore. After the festival we packed up and headed back to Astrolabe Farm where Arabella was busy preparing lots of her delicious pizzas. Today I’m hoping that the rain holds off so I can get all the aprons dried!

Jane and Simon are headed down to Gore today for a tasting and Sophie and Jason are off to Melbourne tommorow. As I write this now in the Blenheim office people are busy planning the upcoming harvest with Jeremy our viticulturist and winemaker Tim. Looks like another very busy week for the Astrolabe/Durvillea team. For more photos from the Wine Fest check out our flickr page!

- Meg

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Sophies Wrap Up- Leslie Sbrocco and Wine and Food Festival preparation

February 11th, 2010 · family, jane, meg, sophie

Two days to go until  the 2010 Marlborough Wine and Food festival and things are very busy around here. The wine has been ordered, and will (fingers crossed) be delivered to the event tomorrow afternoon. Jane is at home sewing pinnys- a wee preview of one below, she is also organising the table cloths,the material for the sides of the tents, and drying durvillea seaweed for the tent. Jane and Simon went down to Kaikoura last weekend and collected it. Meg arrived home today, and I have a feeling her and Bella are baking and cooking tomorrow to prepare snacks for the Durvillea and Astrolabe workers.

The Durvillea banner turned up yesterday as it is our first Wine and Food festival for Durvillea we had to get one printed as a banner is one of the requirements for attending the festival. Like everything new we were a bit worried about how it would look, however it looks great and we are very pleased. We also got another Astrolabe one printed as we thought we had lost the old one last year, but as expected, as soon as it turned up we found the old one! Luckily, we got a different background this year, so we haven’t really doubled up too much!

On top of it being the week coming up to Wine and Food, it has been a catch up week, as I took two days off last week to head down to Rippon in Wanaka- incidentally it was a fabulously hot weekend, great to catch up with friends and a brilliant concert. Though while it was great for me to have to time off, it did add to the work Jane had to do in a particularly busy week, perhaps not the best planning on my part.

I do seem to be back tracking on this blog, and I apologise, but nonetheless, on Monday we had winewriter Leslie Sbrocco for lunch at Astrolabe Farm

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She was great fun, and very insightful into the American market, she also loved that we are using face book, twitter and blogging with Durvillea.

In amongst the last two weeks, I have not forgotten my half marathon training. I have still been managing to run, actually, correction, I only got two runs in last week, but thats ok.  The most surprising, and motivating thing, was that this week on Monday when I went for my first run, after the last 4 days off I went for my long run (normally 7.7km that I have to run/walk) I managed to run the whole way, even making it a little bit longer! It took me just under an hour, so I was very pleased.

I am back to my training now of 3-4 runs a week, and another cardio activity, and am hoping to try a long run on Sunday, even if I have to run/ walk some of it. (Some of the girls I am hoping to run the marathon with are already up to a casual 10- 15km, so I do have a long way to go!!!)

Will try tweet and put photos up from the Wine and Food festival, and if any of you are going, we are just across the bridge, so come and say hi! PS. Sorry the blog had very little pictures, will make up for it after this weekend!

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Sounday Competition

February 1st, 2010 · On the road, durvillea, jane, sophie

After a fantastic Sounday concert on Saturday at Hagley Park, we are running a competition from all the photos we took of people drinking Durvillea wine.  Go to our face book page, vote for your favourite photo of the day by “liking” it and the photos with the most “likes” on Friday 5th February will win a 6 pack Durvillea Wine.  http://www.facebook.com/durvilleawines

You may also find you know some people, so feel free to tag them and encourage them to vote for themselves! Thanks to Karyn, Jonnie, Janelle from Fabel for organising a fabulous day out, and to the great line up of artists.

     

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Sophie’s Wrap Up

January 29th, 2010 · durvillea, jane, sophie

Three weeks ago I decided to sign up for the Saint Clair vineyard half marathon (for those of you reading this who want to do the run aswell, go to www.vineyardhalf.com). While I used to be quite fit back at school, I haven’t really run since, and it is an effort for me to run 3km, a half marathon is 21km!  However since I have signed up a couple of good things have come from it;

1. We have decided I will run it in a Durvillea singlet, adding to the motivation of doing it, and wanting to do well.
2. I have managed to convince some friends to do it with me, also a good way to get them to visit me in Marlborough, also good motivation as I don’t want to be the last one out of all of us!

It is 14 weeks till the run tomorrow, and so far I am up to running comfortably 5km, a great website I have been using has been www.mapmyrun.com. I went into Newman Graphics yesterday who do all of aprons, t-shirts etc and they have got me a singlet, and we are currently trying to think of a design for the back. So far we are going with the Durvillea logo and “Durvillea Girl” Libby, I think you should come back and run it too, I can get another one printed!

Later this afternoon, Jane, Bella and I are off down to Christchurch as Sounday is on tomorrow, for those of you who are going make sure you come and say Hi to us, we will be there most of the day and hopefully getting some snaps of people drinking Durvillea, we might even chose a photo of the day and the winner will win 3 bottles of Durvillea, feel free to post your own up too!

Another event that we are busy organising (Jane is ordering the hesian for the table as I write this!) is the Wine and Food festival, this is a great event, but does require a lot of time to be put into it. The black boards are being printed, and we have just okay’ed the banner this week. Jane is going to make us pinny’s in the next couple of weeks, and we are just finalising who will work the day.

While all this is going on I am entering some of the national and international shows that are coming up, it is always a litle stressful trying to make sure you remember all the deadlines for entry, stock delivery etc. I have also just added us up to the www.lovewine.com website, a social network for wineries and those that love wine!

I am looking forward to going to CHCH, will be nice to be home, must remember to run though, hopefully will be up to 8km next time I blog…..

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Akaroa

January 22nd, 2010 · durvillea, family, jane

It seems like such a long time ago that all the Forrest-Waghorn family were in Akaroa getting ready for Christmas. Even though it was a while ago we took some lovely photos down there so I thought I would share some with you all. There will also be some recipes to follow in the next few weeks.

We Waghorns have had a  very close link with Akaroa and Banks Peninsula since 1850 when our ancestors arrived on the Randolph from England. At the moment my Waghorn grandparents live in Akaroa, along with my dad Simon’s brother Hugh and his sister Sarah. Uncle Hugh along with his wife (our aunt!) Pip owns a few businesses in Akaroa.

The main one is Akaroa Dolphins , who provide nature cruises around Akaroa Harbour. Of course we would highly reccommend them if you are in the area! Who knows, you might get to enjoy a glass of one of our Astrolabe or Durvillea wines on board!

Hugh & Pip also have another business called Captain Hector’s that hires out kayaks and paddle-boats. We really like their logowhich features their cute dog Hector. Hugh has a good little vege garden going on out the back of the Akaroa Dolphins premises.

Jane and her dad Barry in the vege garden

We sent out a few raiding parties to augment our summer meals.

Hugh has bought several electric bikes for visitors to Akaroa to enjoy. Libby and Arabella, along with our cousin Rose, took them for a test drive.

Libby on one of the electric bikes

They took them for a reasonably long run and found them really enjoyable. You don’t need to use the motor all the time, just when you need a little boost. They worked well even on some of the quite steep hills that surround the harbour. Libby & Bella even rode them up to the bach where Mum and I were preparing some food for Christmas and I had a go.

I really liked them and thought they would be great for commuting, especially somewhere hilly like Wellington. However, I’m too much of a scaredy-cat for cycling in Wellington yet so I’ll stick with the bus for now.

One place in Akaroa that we hadn’t been before was The Giant’s House. It is a lovely old house and garden filled with amazing sculpture and mosaic. Here are a few photos of us there:

Arabella at The Giant's House

Libby and Bella

The garden at The Giant's House, Akaroa

There are more photos of The Giant’s House and our Akaroa holiday on our Flickr page if you are interested!

-Meg

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Another update from Libby

January 20th, 2010 · durvillea

Some photos of her second day at the school in Santa Maria de Jesus, beautiful photos and it looks like they are having an amazing time.

Libby with some of her new friends

http://henny-eesa.blogspot.com/

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My Mum’s Salsa Verde Recipe

January 18th, 2010 · durvillea, family, recipe, sophie

This is my mum’s Salsa Verde recipe, but it actually originates from an Annabel Langbein recipe, all of us have many of her recipe books and she is a bit of a favourite in our family.

This is a summer staple for your fridge and is great with beef on the barbeque, baked salmon, bean salad or just a loaf of half baked bread.

Salsa Verde

Salsa Verde
1 packed cup parsley
½ packed cup mint leave
1 bunch chopped chives
¾ cup olive oil
¼ cup capers
3 cloves garlic
2 tsp Dijon mustard
2-3 tbsp lemon juice
¼ medium onion chopped
1 small can of anchovies

Blend together until smooth. Store in the fridge and keeps for several weeks.  Makes about 1½ cups.

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