Author Archives: Durvillea

Vote for us!

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As I was scrolling through twitter this morning I saw a link for the 2011 Wine Blog awards. After thinking about it further I thought, why not. So I have just nominated our Durvillea Wines blog in the Best Overall Wine Blog category. If any of you agree, click here to vote, or if you are a keen blog reader, to find out more wine blogs that you could be following!

Blending photo from the 2010 Vintage

It’s a dreary day in Marlborough today and as you drive around you can see that for some vineyards pruning has already begun. There are still some vineyards with the last of their autumn leaves on them. This is more than likely due to them being picked last. All of our 2011 fruit is in the winery, most of the ferments are almost dry. Simon is the checking sugar levels each day to ensure that the wines are stopped at the desired time so the end result provides us with the ideal residual sugar. Blending is also being thought about and will probably begin end of next week. Blending is an exciting time and it is incredible to watch Simon at work.

He has endless glasses of different wines in front of him each with a specific characters that he is looking for. This process is what allows him to create the same style of wine for the brand each year. The wines in barrel are also being monitored.

We have a couple of exciting things going on as well, last week Gary Numan played in Auckland, it sounded like a great gig, with Stuff giving it a great review. We were lucky enough to be approached and along with Stoke beer and Whittakers chocolate were part of the gifts in their rooms when they arrived.  We hope you liked the wine team!

Durvillea gift for Gary Numan and Co

We are also supporting Kate Morris, a producer at Page Left a playwright-producers group dedicated to getting new Kiwi work on stage.  She approached us last week as they have a show debuting next month in Wellington at Bats Theatre, it is called McKenzie Country and is written by emerging playwright Hannah McKie who has already won the Dominion Post Scholarship and David Carson-Parker Embassy award. We were excited to be approached and as Kate had mentioned to us she wanted “to keep the theme Kiwi – new Kiwi play, Kiwi produced, Kiwi supported!” We agreed, so Durvillea Wine will be available on the opening night, Tuesday 14th June and we hope it is a huge success. Good Luck Hannah.  For ticket info: Email book@bats.co.nz or phone (04) 802 4175

Update from Sophie and a delicious Duck recipe

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We are only a couple of weeks into the duck shooting season and yesterday we were lucky enough to be given four ducks, so it was therefore a given that we would be having duck for dinner.

One of the best mobile websites I have been using recently is the New York Times Recipe Search site (http://mobile.nytimes.com/recipes) simply click on the link and you can search for recipes with up to three ingredients. This was exactly what I did yesterday, searching for recipe in which all the ingredients needed I had at home already! Eventually I decided on the Duck marinated in Red Wine and Orange which was so delicious, tender and juicy that I had to share it with you http://nyti.ms/jg4FY0.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup red wine
  • 1 tablespoon chili oil
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
  • 1 orange, juiced, rind cut into strips
  • 4 whole duck breasts, skin and fat removed
  • Olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons sliced chives, for garnish

Preparation

1.

In a large freezer bag, combine wine, chili oil, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, orange juice and orange rind. Mix well and add duck breasts. Seal bag and mix again. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 24 hours.
2.
Remove duck from marinade and shake off excess liquid. Heat and lightly oil a grill, ridged skillet or heavy flat skillet. Cook duck breasts to taste, turning frequently, 10 to 15 minutes. If desired, cooked breasts may be wrapped in foil and held for 10 minutes until serving.
3.
To serve, thinly slice breasts diagonally and arrange on a serving plate. Pour any juices in pan or foil on top. Garnish with chives, and serve.

I also then reduced the marinating sauce and put it as a side when serving. While I didn’t have a bottle at home, I think our Durvillea Pinot Noir would have been a great match with this dish.

Aside from eating and drinking it has been a busy few months for the Durvillea girls, when I blogged last time, Jane was in Canada and as I blog now, she is in Brisbane visiting our Queensland distributors.  I had four emails last week from Queenslanders asking where they can get our Durvillea Pinot Grigio, so for the rest of you QLD Grigio fans who also want to know where to buy it from, check out these retailers, or email Paul: paul@smashingbottles.com.au

  • Chalk and Cheese
  • Spiro’s
  • Thirsty Camel Balmoral

Durvillea was also released in Canada last month (30 April) the Sauvignon Blanc is now available at Vintages in Ontario and has already had a great review from Beppi Crosariol. Read his review here.

Bob and Jo tasting fruit with Simon in the Awatere Valley, Marlborough

We have also had a few visitors, with Bob Campbell and Jo Burzynska coming down last month for a look around our vineyards, a tasting and lunch with us, it was a great day and we were extremely lucky with the weather also, a fabulous day to show Marlborough in its best light!

We did an Astrolabe vertical tasting as well, managing to find Sauvignon Blancs all the way back to 2002, one of the most interesting and exciting things was how good these SB’s were drinking, with the 2003 and 2006 being favourites.

Simon and the Astrolabe Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc vertical tasting

On a different note,one of the other things that is going on is that I am sadly leaving Astrolabe and Durvillea Wines (not till the end of June though). I am going travelling through Europe with some of my best school friends and am then planning to get a job in the wine industry in either the UK or Australia. So, while it is going to be hard to leave, at least there are some exciting things in store for me and we do have a fabulous new replacement for me coming on board who we will introduce to you soon.

One of the big questions we have been pondering in the office is whether I can still be a Durvillea Girl…… I sure hope so!

An Ode to Autumn

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The harvest is now over. All the grapes for the 2011 vintage have been picked, except of course the 4 rows of Riesling which we hope will turn into sticky.

Riesling still on the vine at Astrolabe Farm

This is a risky business and we need the weather to be just right. We are also wondering if the weather as affected the mushrooms. For some reason the mushroom harvest this year has been particularly poor. Yesterday Simon and wandered about “shrooming” but we only gathered enough to add to the lamb shank casserole.
It has been a wet Easter weekend so there has been little activity outside. A couple of days rest means I am now eager to tidy up the veggie garden. My vegetable garden has been quite unproductive this year. I still can find potatoes and a few cherry tomatoes from the glass house. However the focus this year has been on growing flowers for Meg and Henry’s wedding. Although that was 6 weeks ago we have marigolds, salvia and dahlias galore.

Dahlias galore

Dahlias have been an absolute highlight for me this summer. They have flowered continuously for weeks.

Marigolds

More dahlias

Dogwood

The Dogwoods are now dropping their leaves. They have been very showy this year. Indeed the autumn colours are lovely. The pear tree is laden and the swans have made a little track across the pond paddock to feast on the windfalls.
We have removed many of our feijoa trees to make way for my firewood coppice but we still have enough to ensure a good supply for eating and cooking . Our good friend James Hall from SPQR was down visiting a week or so ago and he sent me a feijoa cake recipe that has lived on his fridge for some time. Today I made it and include the recipe here for you. I am not sure who created this recipe but it has probably came from the NZ Herald.
The Best Feijoa Cake
125g butter
200g white sugar (approx ¾ cup)
2 eggs 
165g flour (approx 1 1/3 cups)
2tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
30g ground almonds (about one packet)
225g sour cream
1tsp almond essence
Approx.500g ripe feijoas – skinned and cut in a half or thirds
1 Tbsp heaped coarse grained sugar (demerara is ideal)
A generous pinch of ground ginger

Pre-heat oven to 200C. Prepare a 22cm cake tin. Cream together the butter and sugar very well. Beat in the eggs one at a time until well combined, then lastly the essence. Sift the dry ingredients over mixture and add at the same time the sour cream and ground almonds. Fold in carefully until well combined. (Mixture is quite thick). Spoon into prepared pan and very lightly press in the fruit cut side up. The fruit should be in a single layer. Sprinkle sugar and ginger over fruit. Put the cake into the oven and reduce heat to 180C. Bake 50 mins, turn oven off and leave in oven for an hour or overnight. Serve warm.

(The cake is quite pudding like but very tasty and a change from other recipes I have tried which are more carrot cake in style.)

So Easter is almost at an end. Arabella is back to university tomorrow but has taken all the photos for my blog. We will have to pack away all our Easter chicks until next year. However we love autumn, the perfect season for redheads, and there is nothing quite so nice at the end of the day as drawing the curtains to sit in front of the fire with a glass of pinot noir .

Jane

Update from Sophie

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It really has been a busy start to the year, so a belated Happy New Year to you all and a hello. It has been a while. However as Jane mentioned us Durvillea girls have approached 2011 with vigour and with the wedding only just behind us, Jane has already hosted several tastings at Astrolabe Farm. She is now in Canada with Jason and our British Columbia distributors, Christopher Stewart Wines and Spirits, getting ready for theVancouver Playhouse which starts this week.

Making Salsa Verde

One of the tastings we held at Astrolabe Farm was for our Chinese distributors, Jonty and William from New Zealand Wine International Ltd and two of their Chinese contacts. A tasting of our Astrolabe Wines was held before a fantastic lunch prepared by Jane, Jason, Simon and myself. My contribution being a salad and salsa verde. I couldn’t find the recipe for the salsa verde so ended up having to search on our website for it- this blog has been very useful for this. Incidentally we get a lot of visitors to our site because of this recipe!

Vintage is also happening! It has been an earlier start to vintage this year, with the first of our Pinot Gris being taken on the 18th March. Since then we have taken some more Pinot Gris,

Jane Picking Pinot Noir at Astrolabe farm

Pinot Noir and Gewurztraminer, making our first Sauvignon Blanc pick this evening. Being an earlier start, it has also been a slower start, with Simon being able to pick exactly when the fruit has the desired ripeness and flavour profiles.

The weather has been perfect, and as I type this I am looking out to a clear blue sky with no clouds in sight. The mornings are getting cooler though- precisely one of the reasons Marlborough is such a unique growing region. The fine days (surprisingly, tomorrow is supposed to get to 27°C!) are great for ripening, and the cool nights are perfect for picking in, allowing us to keep the phenolics down, protecting the wines aromatic potential. Vintage will ramp-up this week, though, as the 12 hour shifts in the wineries come into play, and the bulk of the fruit will be picked in the next 10 days or so, I believe. It is a fantastic time of year that I personally love – the town has a buzz to it, harvesters, gondolas and grape trucks are a common sight on the main roads, and everyone is following the weather!

Pinot Gris being loaded to be whole bunch pressed

If any of you have any questions for us on the 2011 vintage do post them below and I will put it to Simon so he can answer your questions for you!

Sophie’s Update and a New competition

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It is just over six weeks till Christmas  and you can definitely tell. Christmas carols are already being played in stores, lots more orders are starting to come in and finally the weather is warming up- today is forecast for 27degrees in Blenheim!

Tasting new releases at Chesters, Brisbane

Last week Jason, Jeremy our viticulturist and I were in Brisbane for a meeting with our Australian distributors. This meeting went really well, we tasted all of our new release wines with them and all four states seemed to be in line in terms of pricing, the branding, and their views going forward. Interestingly the Kekerengu Sauvignon Blanc from our Astrolabe range seemed to be very popular over there.

Currently we only have Durvillea in two of the four states, QLD and VIC, but in both states the brand is being well received, the Durvillea Pinot Grigio seems to be a real winner at the moment.

Coming back to Christmas however, this year we are having Christmas at Astrolabe Farm, and it will be my family (the McLernons) and the Waghorns. Christmas is one of my favourite times of year, and the food on Christmas Day is definitely a highlight. We normally have a hot ham and a turkey and many other delicious treats that various family members bring along. This year Meg and I have decided that we should probably contribute a bit more, so we are being a little bit cheeky using this competition to get recipes and ideas from you!

Family Christmas '09

But we will also be giving you a chance to win!

To enter this competition we want you to give us your favourite Christmas recipe, it can be an entree, a dip, a stuffing, a glaze, a whole meal, a dessert, whatever Christmas food/meal is most dear to you.

At the end of each week the prize will be 2 bottles of Durvillea Wine (for the first five weeks) and then the last week (being drawn 17th December) everyone who has entered the competition will go into the draw again to win a Magnum of Durvillea Sauvignon Blanc.

Each week each of us Durvillea girls will also be posting one of our favourite recipes, so to start of this week I am going to give you two little ones that are almost always used in our family!

One is a fantastic Hot Ham glaze, and the other a Turkey Stuffing that my mum Nicki always uses.

Hot Ham Glaze
½ c runny honey
1 ½ c brown sugar
2 tbsp mustard (any)
½ c juice (pineapple or orange)
Whole cloves

Heat honey in microwave until warm,
Stir in the brown sugar
Add the mustard and then juice

Remove skin from ham, cut diamonds into the fat, stud with cloves and brush glaze over. Bake for a couple of hours at 160degrees. Check regularly to ensure it isn’t burning.

Turkey Stuffing
1 C fresh brown bread crumbs
4-6 shallots cooked in olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic sliced and cooked in olive oil
1 c black olives
200gm bacon or prosciutto-chopped
1 tbsp finely chopped rosemary

So post up your favourite recipe or meal on this blog and we will do the first draw this coming Friday 19th November for the first two bottles of Durvillea wine (your choice)

Terms and Condition to Enter:
* Must be over 18
* Comments must be posted on this blog, not our facebook or twitter accounts
* Only those in New Zealand and Australia are eligible for this compeition
* One person’s recipe a week will be drawn from a hat each Friday until the 17th December and that lucky person will win 2 bottles of their choice of Durvillea wines
*Everyone who posted a recipe will go in the draw for the Durvillea Sauvignon Blanc magnum to be drawn 17th December

2009 Durvillea Sauvignon Blanc wins Gold at International Aromatic Wine Comp

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We are very pleased to announce that our 2009 Durvillea Sauvignon Blanc (only just released) has won a Gold medal at the International Aromatic Wine Competition this week. For their Press Release click here and for a list of other award winning wines click here

Already this wine has done extremely well, picking up a Gold at the Liquorland International Wine Competition also. Our tasting note for this wine is available below- keep clicking on the image until it is a size you can read!

As I mentioned earlier, Meg and I have been talking and realised that we haven’t held a competition in a while, so we have decided that come November ( not long now) we will hold another competiton! As it often is with us Durvillea girls it will most likely be food based…..

Durvillea Pinot Grigio one of Top 50 wines at NWWA

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At the Auckland NW tasting

Last week I was in Rotorua and Auckland for the New World Wine Awards. Our 2009 Durvillea Pinot Grigio was awarded one of the Top 50 wines in the competition. There were two tastings to give the Rotorua area and Auckland area store reps and owners a chance to get in and taste the wines before they were announced today. For a list of the Top 50 wines, click here 

As I hadn’t been to Rotorua in years I tried to make the most of it by getting up early for a run/walk around the waterfront and to look around the place- One of the best ways to do it I think, when you are in a new city. The place I was staying at was right in town so I was able to go around the waterfront which was gorgeous early in the morning.

Early morning view of Lake Rotorua

This year New World is doing a big push on being interactive, one of the ways they are doing this is by sending the New World’s neck tags for each of the wines.

QR code for Pinot Grigio

This means that you can scan the QR code with a smart phone and it will push you through to the website where you can read tasting notes on the wines and food suggestions/recipes are made.

For those that don’t have a smart phone, you can text in a code and the website is emailed back to you so you can look it up later.
So when you are in your local New World this week, make sure you look out for the Top 50 wine display, and try out this new technology.

 

Thinking of those in the Canterbury Earthquake

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On the Fourth of September 2010, Canterbury was rocked with an earthquake measuring 7.1, the largest in many years. While this earthquake has been compared to the devastating Haiti earthquake, we were very lucky that there were very few casualties. However, looking through some of the photos of the earthquake is awful, as many of the iconic Christchurch buildings have been damaged and the face of Christchurch as we know it may change.

Family home missing a chimney

Family home missing a chimney

My family is from Christchurch, and we were very lucky that with the impact of the earthquake, we only lost a chimney.

For those of you in Canterbury who have been affected by this quake, we would like to let you know how sorry we are. To our extremely supportive retailers and restaurants, we hope you have not suffered too much damage.

When an event like this happens it is amazing how the community bands together and helps each other out, on the news there have been many stories of families, neighbours and complete strangers lending a hand to provide support and to try and help the slow process of rebuilding.

One particular group of people that have been helping out are a large group of University students, led by Sam Johnson. These students have taken to the streets for the last week, taking advantage of a week off university to help those in the worst affected suburbs. Louis Brown and Sam Judd who we supported last week with their Grand Celebration in Hokitika, had some Durvillea Sauvignon Blanc left over. They gave me a call on Saturday to say they were in CHCH and had contacted Sam Johnson, and would we mind if we donated the left over wine to Sam and his team, which we were more than happy to do! Below is a photo of Sam and a fellow student David Turner recieiving the Durvillea SB. Great work that you and your team are doing Sam!

Fellow student, Sam Judd, Sam Johnson and Louis Brown with Durvillea Wine

David Turner, Sam Judd, Sam Johnson and Louis Brown with Durvillea Wine

Sophie’s update

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Hello all, It has been a while since I have written on here, and as you can imagine, there are a lot of things happening.  As we come into Spring, most of our growers have finished their pruning, setting the vineyards up for a great growing season ahead.

We are releasing the 2009 Durvillea Sauvignon Blanc this week to the whole country, with only a pallet or so left of the 2008, which is all allocated. The 2009 Durvillea SB has already had some great results, recieving Gold in the Liquorland International Wine Competition earlier this year, and being selected as one of the Top100 wines, Michael Cooper has also reviewed the wine and I have posted his review up today here.

A Grand Celebration

A few weeks ago I was down in Kaikoura for a friends birthday, I got talking to one of the guys there, who turned out to be a co- founder of Sustainable Coastlines, after talking some more about what they do we realised that Durvillea could help by supporting them in some of their events that they hold. The  result of this has been that Durvillea is sponsoring the world film premiere of “A day at the beach” screening in Hokitika this Friday. The evening is also the launch of Love Your Coast a collaborative initiative between Sustainable Coastlines and the Te Wai Pounamu Foundation. This is to be a nationwide clean up of our beaches and coastline- make sure you look out for the clean up near you.

For those of you on the West Coast who may be heading along to the Grand Celebration, we would love to hear your feedback, it should be a good night!

On a completely different note, I’m not sure if many of you have seen the baby seals on the Kaikoura Coast at the moment, but I went down to see them the other day, and they were incredible to watch, below is a video of them playing. It was great to see that the people who were there while we were, were being respectful of them as wild animals. Meg went to see them too on her way down to Christchurch and I know she has some great photos, so she might post some up soon too.

 

-Sophie

Sophie’s Wrap Up- A little update on the 2010 wines

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It is a very wet Marlborough day today, so I don’t imagine much pruning is going on. As I mentioned last week, the only things going on in the vineyard at the moment are pruning and maintence. Pruning is probably the most important time of the year as it gets the vines set up for the growing season coming. The vines are fully dormant so are not affected by the wet or cold weather, in fact the water is good to increase the moisture in the soil.

As it has been a wet morning, Simon has been in the office, so he was able to give me a run down on what is going on in the winery at the moment. All of the 2010 vintage wines are still in the winery, the Pinot Grigio is to be filtered today, this is to remove any traces of yeast and colloids and to make the wine clear and bright. We are hoping to get this wine bottled this month, as it has been so popular and all been allocated (we still have a wee bit left that we are supplying restaurants with).

The Sauvignon Blanc has been blended and is looking good, it has a nice minerality, and is a fuller wine than in previous years. It still has to be cold stabilised to make the tartrate crystals fall out, so the wine is stable, and can be stored for extended periods of time at cool temperatures.  The Pinot Noir is still in barrel maturing, and is several months away before it will be taken out and blended, though it is already showing bright cherry and plum notes, and has a nice weight.

This time of year is busy in the winery and office, as wines are being finished, bottling dates secured, and I have to keep on top of our allocations to make sure we don’t run of out of a wine before the next vintage is ready.

In between all of this, I attended a NZ winegrowers seminar a couple of weeks ago, one of the presentations that was very useful was a social media one, again highlighting the importance of being online and available to talk to all of you, and to be talked to and about! A lot of different applications and social media tools were also talked about, one in particular that stood out to me was an application that you could attach to your face book page to allow you to buy wine online through facebook. For more information go to www.yourwineyourway.com  and to check out how to buy our wine online click on this link http://bit.ly/bWDSlN

For those of you that are interested, there is still a little bit left of the 2008 Durvillea Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc which is drinking really well, so make sure you get yourself some before it all runs out!

Sophie