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

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…..

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

 I am into my third week being back in the office after three weeks away in South East Asia, I had a fabulous time starting at the top of Laos and travelling right down to the bottom and then into Cambodia. They are both amazing countries, and I recommend it to anyone thinking of visiting either of these places, the scenery, people and food are all incredible!

Durvillea Girl at Angkor Wat, Cambodia

While I was away Jane covered for me, it seems we had a lot of exports and other things going on, so she was rather busy by the sounds of things, she did a great job, and I am very grateful to her!

A few things have happened for Durvillea in the last few weeks. One is that all three Durvillea Wines are now available up at Mt Hutt Ski Field, so you can now enjoy a glass of Durvillea up the mountain.

 The second thing is that we had a great review from Yvonne Lorkin for both our Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio. She named our 2008 Sauvignon Blanc as wine of the week a couple of weeks ago on her National radio show, and then last Friday  mentioned that our 2009 Pinot Grigio was “possibly one of the best Pinot Gris I have ever tried” (http://bit.ly/d57THw)

 The third thing was that as we started to get organised for another promotion on facebook we had it pointed out to us by a kind twitter follower that there are in fact Facebook guidelines against the sort of promotion we were planning to run, which was a bit of a surprise to us! For more information on these guidelines visit http://bit.ly/93IFYq  With social marketing, things are always changing and evolving and since these guidelines have been set in place by Facebook, we are going to follow them.

 We are still running our July competition though, it is just in a different format now! All competitions will be run on this blog and you can enter them now by commenting on this blog post. We will give you four chances to win, and the best comment each week will win a mixed three pack of Durvillea Wine. The weekly winner will be decided on a Wednesday morning.

As we are in the middle of winter, and our Pinot Noir seems to be flying out the door.
We want you to tell us your favourite way to enjoy a glass of Pinot Noir (comment below on this blog). If you have any questions please email me at sophie@durvilleawines.co.nz  Otherwise we look forward to your comments and the first winner will be drawn Wednesday 8th July.

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 comment a week will be picked Wednesday mornings each week for the whole of July by the team in the office and that lucky person will win a mixed 3pack of Durvillea wines

Last weekend Sophie came up to Wellington to do two tastings at Thorndon New World with me. I really enjoy the chance to do tastings, it is definitely a skill and I am feeling pretty confident with them now. I think the supermarket tastings are really worthwhile – it is such a competitive market at the moment and consumers can feel overwhelmed with the sheer volume of wine available. Having a chance to taste and have a chat with us will hopefully inspire them to pick up a bottle next time they see us on the shelf. The Pinot Grigio was very popular, lots of people who weren’t big Pinot Gris fans were surprised by how much they liked it. I also think customers really appreciated the fact that we are a family business rather than just merchandisers hired to sell the wine (not that there is anything wrong with that either!). As usual our Durvillea aprons made by Jane went down very well. Sophie also did an Astrolabe tasting at the City Market which she really enjoyed – although it is a pretty hard sell getting the public to taste wine early on a Sunday morning! I personally love the City Market – it gives Wellington a proper city feel I think. Gusty Gourmet is a terrific blog which has some recent entries about the city market – well worth checking out.

This weekend I had another go at making Quince Jelly. Last time I had my mum to help me out but I went solo this weekend. I used the instructions from our own quince jelly post. It is a real family tradition for me – my granny is very good at making it and she was taught by her mother who was in turn taught by hers. This time I used more apple and it worked out well. It is lovely and clear and set quite firmly. I think that the extra pectin and the clear apple juice helped. I also strained it through three layers of stockinette which may have kept it clearer. It is also a deeper ruby red this time. The quinces were brought up from Astrolabe Farm for me by Sophie.

The other main news in my life is my lovely new bike. It is going to help me cut down on my car use especially for short trips. I’ll write more about it later but will leave you with a pretty picture of it.

- Meg

However with the Saint Clair Half Marathon two days away, (I can’t believe how quickly it has come round!) I thought I would let you know how my training is going and how I am feeling coming up to the race!  Things have been ok, and I am definitely feeling better than I was about it a month ago. Someone said to me that if you can run 18km before the race (which I did on Sunday) then you should be able to complete a half marathon.

Training has been a bit more difficult the last week as Jane and I have been in Canada, though the hotels we stayed in were fantastic and all had wee pocket sized running routes printed, and with various distances. I managed to fit in an 8km run in Vancouver, but it was very cold. In Ottawa, we only had about 24 hours and it was snowing, so I decided to give myself a day off. While, Toronto was beautiful and very spring- like, and as we had one morning off, I was able to conquer 15km!

It has felt like a bit of relief since Sunday, especially as all of the training guides say you can taper off, so there hasn’t been the pressure to run long distances, or to run every day. In fact, every second day has been off, and the last run I did was only 5km, though I do have to run tonight. Unfortunately I won’t be able to wear my Durvillea singlet on the day which is a pity, as I find it uncomfortable on the long runs. Now I can’t promise a photo after the run, as I will not be at my best, but there will be a debrief next week on how it went. I would like to do it around 2.5 hours…..

It feels like this harvest has gone very quickly! For me in the office, vintage time is not too different to a normal day, except there is slightly more paperwork to check off. This year we tried to keep our face book site live with what was going on daily during our harvest. I have enjoyed this and so have Jeremy and Tim, with both of them sending in their photos when they had a chance.

It has been a brilliant vintage, with great weather and picking conditions, now the juice is in tanks and barrels fermenting away and Simon is already saying he is excited about this vintage, and that the flavour profiles are looking good.

This month we have also been holding another competition on our facebook site (www.facebook.com/durvilleawines), this has been a food and wine matching one. We have been asking people to post their favourites recipe and Durvillea wine to match it with and they have won a cook book and gone in to win 6 bottles of wine weekly, this has been one of my favourites competitions we have done, as I love to cook, and it has been great to get new some new ideas and recipes to try out!

As Jane talked about in her last blog, Bella has been home recently, so on Thursday and Friday we went down to Blenheim New World and did a couple of tastings, these went really well, and people seemed very interested in the three wines, in particular the Pinot Grigio and Pinot Noir. (The Pinot Grigio was recieved so well is now available at the Blenheim New World, for those who have been looking to try it!) We have also booked in to do one in Wellington next month!

I have also had to start getting myself very organised the last couple of weeks as I am off to Canada for work on Friday, this is for three tradeshows and to meet with our distributors. The trade shows are in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa, and will all be fabulous events. We have been talking with our agents in Toronto about bringing Durvillea into the market, so at the Toronto and Ottawa shows we are showing Durvillea which is very exciting!

However with the trip now so close there is a lot to get done before hand! Hopefully Jane and I will be able to write another blog while we are over there.

PS. An update on my Saint Clair half marathon training, the last few weeks haven’t been going so well, and running seems to be getting harder, not a good thing! It was 3 weeks till the race on Saturday, and they say the week before you should taper off beforehand. This leaves me 2 weeks, in which apparently a 17km should be done- this I am even more worried about. However, I have got my training guide to stick to, and Jane has made sure all our hotels have gyms in them, so fingers crossed I will be able to make it through the race. Any helpful hints/tips would much much appreciated guys!!

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!

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

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!