Riesling vines ready for the experiment

Seed ready to go

Blossom trees are in full bloom. There is now a green haze over the vineyard as the vines leaf out. This year Nick and I have decided to plant alyssum under the first 20 rows of the vineyard. This will mean that we don’t have to spray for weeds and will provide a habitat for insects. Nick mixed the seed with compost and sprinkled it along the rows. In preparation Nick has sprayed every second row for weeds. We are experimenting to see how this will influence germination. Jane

Nick mixing the seed and compost

Really my main focus is getting the garden ready for the wedding.

“The wedding” you say… “wasn’t that in March?” Indeed Meg and Henry’s was, but now Libby and Peter are getting married next March. I am so desperate to start planting. I have lists of seeds I plan to buy from Kings Seeds.
www.kingsseeds.co.nz.

Pink Peony Poppy

I also plan to do a mass planting of hydragenas. This all works out quite well for the company as we hold all tastings here at the farm. It is a nice side effect to have things under control. I have quite a sense of urgency because in September we are off to the UK on a sales trip (no skype date this time). We will be serving Durvillea at a wine dinner at Providores in London.
So if you are in London come along we would love to see on Tuesday 13th September. Here is the link:
http://www.theprovidores.co.uk/news/news_2011.php

[Up date]: I have come home today to finish this blog quietly in front of the fire. There is a polar blast sweeping up the country and this afternoon it has been snowing. This is extraordinary in Marlborough. It has been cold but beautiful. I have spent most of the afternoon gazing out the window. We just don’t see snowflakes in Marlborough. My sister Nicola lives in Christchurch. Here is a photograph she took of Reilly the Jack Russell stretching his legs.
So it’s quiet winter focused on family, garden, books (the Man Booker Longlist out) and trying to keep warm while dreaming of flowers. However there is also Friday office drinks……watch out for Miss Ferrier’s social report in our next Durvillea dispatch.

Oh, and to finish: http://vimeo.com/27709878 Check out this lovely video of snow on Cuba St in Wellington by Ro Tierney

On our first day of picking we had quite a large team of friends and family and we mostly picked by hand, with the assistance of a backpack harvesting machine we have christened ‘Fingers’ that shakes the olives down.

The second day helpers were a little thin on the ground as it was a week day so we experimented with hitting the trees with old broomsticks to shake the olives off. It sounds brutal but it doesn’t seem to harm the trees and is quite traditional. We brought in a bumper crop that day in record time and managed to get the olives to the press before a rather nasty southerly swept in.

All photos by Nicola Forrest-McLernon and Arabella.

Olive tree on a beautiful Marlborough day

It was an absolutely beautiful day for our first pick. I stepped off the plane from Wellington (where it was windy and rainy) to a clear, crisp and sunny South Island day.

Simon and 'Fingers' the olive harvester

Olives shaken or picked onto the nets for collection.

Jane empties olives from the net into a bin

Freshly harvested olives

Delicious harvest feast of bacon and egg pie, buffalo sausages and pumpkin soup

Who's this mystery woman? Come back next week to find out!

Who’s that girl? Visit the blog next week to be introduced to the latest addition to the Durvillea team…

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 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

We are back. It has been a slow start for us at Durvillea Wines on the blogging production line. However the lives of the Durvillea Women have been action packed.
Before I begin filling you in on what the Durvillea’s have been up to, I have to acknowledge all those suffering in the world. We have family in Christchurch and they are all safe and facing the future with resilience. Our niece Louise is an English teacher in Japan and thankfully she too is safe. We are very fortunate here and I think that all the economic turmoil and now devastating earthquakes have helped us all remember what is really important.

The end of 2010 was a whirlwind. No sooner were Simon and I back from Canada, Ireland and the UK than we were packing for Brisbane. Libby graduated from University of Queensland with a BA and LLB(hons).

Libby graduates

We had a great time as Dad joined us. Then home for Christmas with the McLernon ‘s here as Astrolabe Farm. Food, family and dancing.

However the big event was just building up. On the 5th March we held Meg and Henry’s wedding here at Astrolabe Farm. It was a wonderful day full of happiness, love and fabulous dancing. There were many elements that we created ourselves. We sewed the bunting and the tablecloths.

Sewing bee

Invitations in progress

The finished effect

Arabella designed the invitations and we screen printed them here. Libby made the little figures for the top of the cake. My sister and Henry’s dad did the flowers. Simon’s sister made the cake. So many people helped out. Here is a little album of Meg and Henry’s Civil Union.

Then to top it all off Sophie decided that she would hold a fundraising auction for Christchurch. If I had not been distracted by the wedding I would have been a bit of damp squib. How can you pull it together in time was in my mind. Well she did.

Sophie at work

It was a terrific event. Sophie and her co-organiser Kate Cameron raised $33,618. We are very proud.

So we are very proud of the women involved in Durvillea Wines. They are an astonishing bunch of young women.

Another festive thing we get a bit excited about is the food. Although we love traditional Christmas cuisine, being in Marlborough we also have lots of summer produce ready for eating at the farm. There are always plenty of berries, new potatoes and peas from Jane’s vegetable garden. One of my favourite Christmas dinner dishes is peas and pancetta. This salad looks lovely and green on the table and is a delicious interval to rich ham and turkey.

Peas and Pancetta

Olive oil

Pancetta (100 grams or so)

1 cup white wine

1 small onion

5 cups fresh picked peas

1 clove garlic

Cook chopped onion and pancetta in olive oil until brown. Add garlic and keep cooking until it smells nice! Add wine peas and black pepper and simmer until peas are tender and wine is absorbed.

We already have some delicious entries into this week’s draw: Danielle’s mushroom and bacon pate, Kathie’s Ham with Spicy Plum and Mustard Glaze, Erin’s Meat Sauce, Lucy’s Sultana Cake, Cynthia’s Christmas mince and Claire’s Parsley Butter. Check them out on last week’s blog. To enter your recipe see the info below.

- Arabella

Competition details:

Post up your favourite Christmas recipe, meal, or serving suggestion on this blog and we will do the second draw this coming Friday3rd Decmeber for the next 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 competition
* 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

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

It has been a sad winter in the chicken coop. My dear old Wyandotte Winnie died and a couple of months later my little red hen Hettie dropped dead too. These hens were quite elderly and, while I love River Cottage, I ain’t no Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and I have to bring in hired assassins if a hen needs killing. However, hope does spring eternal and I now have four young hens housed in the dog run until they get a little bigger and can be introduced to the older girls. They are brown shavers. My aim is to have continuous egg production throughout the year. The others all went off the lay over winter. I want egg production units! These plain but oh so charming girls are, I hope, the answer. As if in fright the others are all producing again!

It is also asparagus time. Alas the crop is poor. The crowns in the bed are over 20 years old and it is time for new ones. The potatoes are sprouting and the weeds are flourishing. I am so keen to get out there. I had my foot reconstructed 5 weeks ago and my gardening has been curtailed. I have my King’s seed catalogue at my side and oh so many plans.

The ground is finally drying out after a very wet winter. The Chardonnay is budding out. We gave Simon Cider Apple trees for Father’s Day with the glorious names of Sidero, Broxwood Foxwelp, and Kingston Black Semi-dwarf. Apple blossom, pear blossom, cherry blossom, quince blossom…….. Hope springs eternal.

Mother's violets in my garden

In memory of my mother Ruth Forrest who died on 26 August, the Durvillea girls’ Nana.

Mother’s Sweet and Sour Pork (a trip back to 1970′s)

1 1/2 lb lean pork cut in strips

2 tablespoons fat

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup vinegar

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup green pepper strips

1 med. can pineapple chunks

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons cornflour

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1/2 cup thinly sliced onion

Brown pork in the hot fat, add water, cover & simmer until tender – about 1 hour. Drain pineapple, reserving syrup, combine sugar, cornflour & pineapple syrup (3/4 to 1 cup), vinegar, soy sauce and salt. Cook over low heat until thick, stirring constantly. Pour over hot cooked pork and leave to stand 10 minutes or longer, add pineapple, green pepper & onion. Cook 2 to 3 minutes. Serve with rice or noodles.

The day dawned wet and gloomy so we delayed our start to 9:30. We pick the bulk of the olives by hand but this year we borrowed a machine to help us reach the very highest fruit. The machine is basically a large vibrating fork that shakes the fruit off the branches. We lay out nets to catch the fruit and then empty it into small plastic bins and then tip those into a larger bin.

Although the trees were wet picking was pleasant and social as usual. Olive trees are a good height for hand picking. As someone pointed out the downside to olive picking is that it is one of the few fruit crops that you can’t snack on while picking. Olives off the tree taste terrible! Its amazing how delicious they are once pressed into oil or marinated into table olives.

Arabella was on kitchen duty and prepared a delicious lunch of scones and soup. After a half hour break we were back at it and we finished up by 3 pm which we were very pleased with. Our bin was full to the brim with 406 kgs of olives and while Simon drove it off to be pressed the rest of us enjoyed a cold beer. As I write today Simon is off to pick up the freshly pressed oil.

Today is fairly wet in Marlborough and we are pleased that we got the olives in yesterday! It is really satisfying knowing that the fruit is picked and pressed and we can look forward to having another year’s supply of delicious home produced olive oil. You can see more photos on our Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/durvillea/

- Meg