Monthly Archives: March 2010

Sophie’s Wrap Up- The Start of Vintage

Posted on by Durvillea
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Today we made our first pick for the 2010 harvest for Durvillea and Astrolabe, this is the first pick of about 60 picks that we will do over the next month.

The Wrekin

The pick today started at 7.30am at the Wrekin Vineyard, up the Brancott Valley which is part of Southern Valleys. As there are so many clones here we will probably return and do about 4 more picks so all the fruit and clones are picked at the optimum times.

This vintage will start off slowly over the next few days, and probably be all go by the middle of next week, we are looking at picking some Pinot Gris tomorrow, and then some more next week. It is hard to know exactly what is being picked when as it is up to to our Viticulturist and the Winemakers, and the weather of course!

I managed to pop out to the vineyard this morning to get some photos of the picking in action. Below is a video of Marge and the team picking Pinot Noir, clone 114.  It is the first video I have taken, so please excuse the sideways camera angles! Should have it sorted for next time!! More photos available on our face book page www.facebook.com/durvilleawines

It has been a good couple of weeks in the office, on Tuesday I headed over to Nelson for the day to visit customers over there, it was a fabulous day and I managed to squeeze in 12 visits and get Durvillea on a couple of new wine lists, I also managed to fit in a visit to Shoe Clinic to buy a new pair of running shoes.

The training hasn’t been going so well for the Saint Clair half marathon, it is 6 weeks away tomorrow and I seem to have half the motivation I had 2 months ago when I started training! A friend has been giving me tips and has started me on an interval training programme once a week, I have been wearing my Durvillea singlet and looking like such a mess at the end of each session I am not sure if it is good advertising! The training is a 2km jog then 400m sprint 1minute rest, 600m sprint, 1minute rest, 1km sprint, 1minute rest, 2km sprint, 1minute rest, 1km sprint, 1minute rest, 600m sprint, 1minute rest, 400m sprint. I must admit, I seem to have long minute rests in between, and I haven’t quite made it to the 2km sprint yet! Am hoping to try out a 12km run at some point this weekend.

As it is Easter next week Meg and Bella will be coming home, and it will be good to see them. Our younger cousin Alice and her friend Jaleesa are over here from Australia doing a vintage with Whitehaven at the moment, and are staying with Jane and Simon, so it will be a very full house-may need to have them at my house for the weekend.

Pinot Noir

We are also starting a new competition in April, so keep watching our facebook website for your chance to win a bottle of two of wine!

A Friday Flap-Up

Posted on by Jane
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Sophie rang me this morning and asked me to bring in the Dean’s bread recipe. I was out feeding my chickens last night’s leftovers and scraps. The chickens are looking a bit scruffy as they are moulting at the moment. Not looking their best and egg production is suffering. I think the time for brown shavers has come. Having to buy eggs when you have 5 chickens (or in my case old chooks) is silly.

Then I had to check my new baby goldfish. Yesterday my lovely pilates teacher Marcia gave me 16 little goldfish for my pond. I have always disliked our funny little concrete pond which had a concrete statue of two little boys in the centre. From their little out stretched hands was meant to come a fountain of water but the pump has died. We named the boys Douglas and Michael after Doulas Wright and Michael Parminter. Unfortunately I knocked Douglas’ head off when cleaning out the pond. However the fish I hope will help the pond and the boys have been retired and I have planted watercress on their plinth instead.

So in the midst of bucolic bliss Sophie’s call sent me into a flap as I can’t find the recipe. I will look again but in the meantime here is the Kasundi recipe. This is from “The Best of Annabel Langbein: Great Food for Busy Lives.” Page 16. (Simon made this using plums and a little less sugar).

225g green ginger, peeled
100g garlic loves, peeled
50g green chillies, sliced in half lengthwise, seeds removed
2 1/2 cups malt vinegar
1 cup canola or safflower oil
2 tbsp tumeric
5 tbsp ground cumin
3 tbsp chilli powder
5 tbsp mustard seeds, ground to a powder
2kg tomatoes, washed and chopped
2 1/4 cups sugar
about 3 tbsp salt

Puree the ginger, garlic and chillies with a little of the vinegar to make a paste. Heat the oil in a very big pot or preserving pan. Add all the ground spices and fry until they exude a fragrant aroma. Add the pureed paste, tomatoes, the rest of the vinegar, sugar and half of the salt (check near the end of cooking to see if more is required). Cook over a low heat, stirring occasionally, until the oil floats to the top (about half an hour). Bottle in sterilised jars while hot with a thin film of hot oil on the top of each jar (to prevent top from drying out) and cover with screwtop seal lids. Leave 2 weeks, keeps indefinitely. Makes about 2 litres.

A final note from Jane: we used old Durvillea bottles to bottle ours.

Sophie’s Wrap Up

Posted on by Durvillea
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It has been over a month since I put a blog up, so there is a lot to cover, I won’t bore you with all of it, but I will start with the trip to Melbourne that Jason and I did to meet with our Australian distributors. In Australia we have separate distributors for each state, we are currently in NSW, VIC, QLD and more recently WA and SA. (for a list of our distributors visit http://www.astrolabewines.co.nz/distributors)  With the addition of WA and SA  it seemed logical to get everyone together in one place and discuss our plans for the year moving forward. It was a good way to get a snapshot of everyone’s markets, and to see how Durvillea was going in each of these states.

Dave and Sophie, Ichi Ni

While in New Zealand Durvillea seems to have more of a retail presence, it seems to be the opposite in Australia, with most of the states agreeing that Durvillea has been going very well as an on- premise wine. The Durvillea Pinot Grigio in particular seemed to be getting alot of interest. While we were only in Australia for two days, we managed to get out to Ichi Ni in St Kilda for dinner on the first night. This is a fantastic restaurant in Melbourne, and it has both Astrolabe and Durvillea on the list.

After a whirlwind trip to Australia it was back to NZ and back to business, there were deadlines for wine competitions to meet for entries and to send stock away, and exports to organise. February seemed to be a very busy month for exports!

The Durvillea Pinot Noir was properly released this month, and already it has had some great reviews, we have even managed to make a review page on the website now- to check it out go to http://www.durvilleawines.co.nz/nice-things-people-are-saying-about-us/ This wine has been well recieved by the retailers, and has been selling very well.

As we approach the middle of March the preparation for vintage is well under way, Simon, Tim and Jeremy are constantly out sampling the different blocks, and assessing the different flavour profiles that each block has. At the moment we are looking to do our first pick for the 2010 Vintage the last week of March, this will be some of our Pinot Noir blocks. The Sauvignon Blanc is further behind, although we are still on track with where we were last vintage. This week the Wairau and Awatere Valley’s were coming in at about 16 – 17 brix (Savvy is normally picked at about 21-22 brix) They are already showing exceptional flavour profiles and we are looking forward to seeing the results, as we continue with the ideal ripening weather of warm days and cool nights.

Durvillea Girl singlet

As all of this is going on, I am still trying to train for the Saint Clair half marathon, last week I attempted my first 10km run, it took me about 75 minutes, and unfortunately I had to run/walk the last 2km. On Saturday just been I tried another long run, this time managing to VERY slowly run the whole way, but my route mapping fell short and it was only 9.2km

Thelma from Newman Graphics just dropped my Durvillea singlet in this afternoon (above) which should really motivate me to go for another run tonight (haven’t been since Saturday) and the run is now only 7 weeks away!! Unfortunately, it is 30 degrees outside, and the idea of a wine seems to be slightly more appealing…. Will see how I go….

Fettuccine, prawns and prosciutto

Posted on by Durvillea
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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!

Crafty work down on the farm.

Posted on by Jane
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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…………

Lanzafame Restaurant due to re-open this weekend.

Posted on by Durvillea
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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.