I have been in Vancouver from the past week with my Astrolabe hat on and this week I am multitasking between the two labels. However, do not worry, I have my Durvillea pinny in my bag.

We are off to a New Zealand Winegrowers Tasting, a trade event. Three sessions: trade, sommeliers and public. Then tomorrow we head back to Toronto for a similar event on Thursday.

I loved Vancouver. I had a day and a half off and did a fantastic walking tour through Gastown and Chinatown, biked and walked around Stanley Park, visited the Museum of Anthropology at UBC and Granville Island Markets. Jason and I meet Tim Pawsey for dinner and he took us to a terrific new generation Chinese restaurant in Chinatown called Bao Bei.

Tim is a wine writer whom we met in New Zealand for the first time last year.  It is always great to meet people and discover interesting places.We also visited Salt,  a cool wine bar in the fantastically named Blood Alley. We ended up at Boneta where we caught  up with the House Wine ladies.

Now I am home in Marlborough and it is raining and pouring. The garden badly needs it. Simon and I have been mushrooming and eating the product of our labours.  Autumn is advancing and the olives are beginning to turn coloured. I have booked dates at the olive mill for June.

I was so inspired by the public gardens of Vancouver and Toronto I have planted tulips. I have many plans for the garden over the coming months as we are having a wedding here next March. It is very exciting and a wonderful spur to planting. I want flowers, so dahlias and delphiniums are mycurrent focus. Daisies, salvias, and geraniums are also in my mind. It is such fun and I am looking forward to getting stuck in. However this week it is Perth and then home. Home sweet home.

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.

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

After spending most of November and December away it is great to be based at home over the next couple of months and boy does the garden need it! Weeds, wind and water. The first two in abundance the last is more of an effort. However it has been raining for the last 12 hours. Hooray. One of the things I love about the garden is how forgiving it can be. Seasons come and go and you have a chance to try again.

You will be pleased to hear that the chickens are all well and reasonably productive. They have eaten all the lettuces in the garden. This is the downside of letting them free range. The vegetable garden is I am afraid rather depleted. However I have begun the campaign and I think I am beginning to regain control. Lack of water and chicken attacks mean that the salad greens have been compromised but the courgettes are coming along. I harvested some potatoes, peas and broadbeans and made a great salad. Now broadbeans have been quite a revelation for me. I have always loathed those nasty grey offerings served up traditionally. However peeling them has changed my life! I am a born again broadbean eater. Below is the recipe I used.

Broad bean, pea, potato and green salad

1 small new potatoes, fresh broad beans podded, fresh peas podded, a few handfuls of green leaves (I used spinach), shaved parmesan cheese, sea salt, freshly ground pepper, 2tbsp red wine vinegar, olive oil.

Cook the potatoes and set aside. Nice if keep warm. Boil the broad beans about 2 mins until their skins start to pop but not too long. Refresh in cold water. Pop them out of their skins. I boiled the peas with beans. Wilt your chosen greens in a little olive oil over a high heat. Split open the potatoes and place a single layer on a serving dish. Add broad beans, peas, greens,  parmesan and season with salt and pepper. dress with red wine vinegar and oil. (I adapted a recipe from”Fuel for your Family: The Waihi Cooks”. This is  a lovely cookbook put together by the families of Waihi School in South Canterbury.

My attention is turning to our abundance of plums and Simon and I thought we might try using our favourite tomato kasundi recipe for plum sauce. We have enjoyed a moderate crop of apricots and we have a huge crop of pears coming on. The swans and ducks on the pond will be very pleased. The coppice is growing so well. Although we have never watered them they are thriving. Grovetown has a very high water table and they seem to be very happy. However Arabella made the observation that at the moment they are kindling size rather than firewood.

Simon and Jane inspecting the alders

We have noticed lots of hegehogs about. I love them, too much Beatrice Potter I suspect. However there have been a number of fatalities in the little pond and pool. Arabella and I have both managed to rescue a couple frantically swiimming with their wee noses poking just above the water.

A shy hedgehog

Next blog I thought I might tell you about how the Durvillea girls are getting crafty.

Jane

We are on the train from Limerick on the way back to Dublin. We travelled down this morning,  which took about 3 hours. Now Limerick is an ancient city formerly inhabited by Vikings and more recently by Frank McCourt of Angela’s Ashes fame.

We are here to launch Durvillea with the O’Briens Wholesale team. Durvillea will be a restaurant brand in Ireland. It is a challenging market in these times but Mike Curran is doing a great job and we wish him well. The weather today in Limerick is also challenging. It has been raining for a week and there has been a lot of flooding and road closures. Tonight the Shannon river is expected to flood and conditions are expected to worsen. In spite of this it has been great to begin in this market and to get to know Mike, Lynne Coyle the Head Buyer for O’Briens, and of course Kevin O’Brien. So here we are on the train with a bag of lovely Irish cheese and crackers, a bottle of Rioja left over from the tasting and 5 paper cups. We can’t wait to come back. 

While we are off on our Durvillea journey Simon is in Dublin doing a tasting at the Blackrock O’Briens store. Last night we all attended another tasting at the Westbury Hotel for about 100 O’Briens loyal customers. It was the first time the girls heard their dear old dad talk formally about the wines to an audience.  Tomorrow it is a winemaker’s lunch at the Royal Irish Yacht Club and then Simon is presenting a masterclass at the Good Food Show.

Tomorrow is our last day in Dublin. We head of in separate directions on Saturday. Meg and Henry head off to Liverpool and London. Arabella, Libby, Simon and I are off to Paris for the weekend. On Monday Simon is off to Perth to meet Jason and fly the Astrolabe flag for the first time in Western Australia. The girls and I are meeting up in London and I will spend a couple of days in the trade, visiting customers.

Dublin is such a fantastic market for us.  O’Briens  import us into Ireland and distribute us through their 28 stores and now Durvillea through the wholesale division. They are terrific stores and a wonderful family based company. We enjoy working with them all. Coming here is like visiting old friends and we have grown very fond of the city of Dublin.

-          Jane.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be blogging from afar and today [actually the 19th of November - Meg] I am in Shanghai, China. Simon, Jason, and I arrived a couple of days ago and have been catching up with our distributor William Feng. This is my first time in China and it is fascinating. Firstly Shanghai is a big modern city with amazing buildings. We have had a wander about the city center with William and his friend Queenie as our guides, both William and Queenie were educated in New Zealand.

It has occurred to me that this is the first time I have visited a communist country. Shanghai bears no resemblance to the Pearl Buck books I read as teenager, or more lately Wild Swans. There is no visible sign of Mao or the Cultural Revolution. It is modern, bustling, and downtown surprisingly European. When we went out to look at the wine and spirit expo it was all a bit grey. Shanghai is preparing for a World Expo next year and there is construction happening everywhere.

We did visit a beautiful temple downtown and a beautiful older part of the city, Yu Gardens. The traditional architecture was lovely. The highlight and greatest challenge was food. Each day William and his friends Harry and Queenie took us to a different restaurant. The most different from any experience of Chinese food I had had before was the hotpot restaurant. As we waited for a table we were offered plum juice, a shoe shine or to have our nails done with fantastical nail art. We were entertained by acrobatic noodle making. The noodles were stretched and tossed with twirling movements like the ribbons in rhythmic gymnastics. The men drank whiskey with dinner and I tried warm black soybean milk which I was not fond of. Set into the table were two chafing dishes in which we cooked our food. One was chilli based and the other began with mushrooms. The first addition was chucks of ducks blood which I tried and tasted like pate. Then various meats, greens and seafood were added. The fine little white mushrooms were delicious but I just couldn’t do the pigs brains.

Harry, William’s friend drove us about which was amazing as the traffic is crazy as you can expect in a city of 20 million. I find riding to work in little old Blenheim a challenge but bicycle riding in Shanghai is death defying. However they do have cycle lanes. I think this is fundamental to making cycling safer and a real alternative needed at home. The pollution was bad and this makes me despair for our planet but as I sit on an aircraft flying across the world I am conscious that I should remember the old “people in glass houses” moral.

This is another emerging market for us and our first container has landed. We attended a function at New Zealand Central which is run by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and everyone is very upbeat about the opportunities in China. (Incidentally we had fantastic nibbles whipped up by Martin Bosley who is a great supporter of Astrolabe in Wellington). We felt we were in good hands with William and it was another amazing opportunity to visit another country.

So now I am flying over Russia and we will be in Dublin tonight.

The next contingent leave today. Henry and Meg fly out from Wellington tonight and we will meet them in Dublin tomorrow night. It is so exciting.

- Jane

Libby, Arabella and Simon survey the tent before the party

Last weekend was a big one for the Waghorn family. Simon turned 50 and we threw him a big party at Astrolabe Farm. Sadly, none of us took many pictures but hopefully some that my aunt Nicki took will surface soon. A great time was had by all – particular highlight for me was watching Dad pogo-ing around the dancefloor to the B52’s later on in the evening…

Having the whole family together (along with lots of extended family and old friends) got us thinking about the next big occasion in the family calendar – Christmas. Every family has their traditional Christmas (or other seasonal holiday) foods and recipes. We’d like to share one of ours, the Christmas Cake. It’s not that original but , as for many other families, the making of the Christmas cake carries with it a lot of meaning and memories.

Ruthie using the Christmas Cake recipe for Jane & Simon's wedding cake

Our recipe comes from our maternal grandmother (Jane’s mother) Ruth Forrest. Our lovely Nana is sadly in a home suffering from severe dementia but we think of her often, particularly in the kitchen as she was a phenomenal cook. This is Nana’s recipe and the copy we have is precious to us, as it is hand written by her. The hard copies of recipes are so evocative, this one has the smears and smudges of a well used recipe as well as the conversions and additions written by my mother, Jane (and a few extras from Dad/Simon). It’s a very visual reminder of my family tree.

This cake has been a Christmas Cake, a wedding cake and a Christening cake in our family. The lucky way to make it is to let everyone stick their hands into it and mix it up a little.

Here’s the recipe:

Ruth’s Christmas Cake

625gms Butter

250gms Brown sugar

250 gms White sugar

750 gms Flour

12 eggs

Tbsp almond

1 kg Currants

1 kg Sultanas

375 gms Sunmaid raisins

125 gms cherries

60 gms almonds

250gms peel

2 tsp cinnamon

pinch nutmeg

1/2 cup brandy

Pour brandy over fruit – I leave overnight. Better to line tin the day before also (easier next day). Cream butter & sugar, add essence. Add egg yolks & mix well (little flour with eggs [I can't quite read this bit - Meg.] won’t curdle.

Next add flour & fruit [and SPICE! - Simon's note]. Lastly beaten egg whites.

Cook six hours in lined tin, light cardboard base – newspaper folded about 3 thick then grease proof. Paper above tin about 2 inches – I put piece of cardboard over cake [can't read here! - Meg] about an hour, won’t burn but smells like it will. [Some hard to read instructions about lining tin]. Bake 300 for 1 hour then 250 – cook 6 hours – place middle – tray underneath.

Use 1/2 recipe will be big enough. 1/2 cooking time – don’t panic if getting too brown – turn to 200. Don’t open oven too much.

Leave in tin until cold, then remove.

Good luck.

- Ruth (& Meg)

Meg, Libby and Bella making the Christmas Cake

I am writing this blog beside the pool over looking Acapulco Bay. It is a long way physically and philosophically from Astrolabe Farm. However it is very impressive and I feel a little like Alice in Wonderland.

 We have flown to Mexico to meet our importers Murray Bindon and his beautiful wife Yolanda Estrada.

 So we are here on big sister (Astrolabe) business and on Tuesday we begin the meet and greet before a function on Wednesday. However Murray is showing some interest in Durvillea as well. Mexico is a relatively new market for us and this is our first trip. It is a wonderful chance to promote the wine, gain some understanding of the market here and strengthen relationships . However right now we are staying at Yolanda and Murray’s apartment here on the beach. Perfecto.

This is another aspect of the wine business. We get to travel. I never take this for granted and I am always grateful for the opportunity to see countries and places. When we travel we have the advantage of being with locals and learning a little about the culture and life. So this morning we mounted an expedition to Walmart!

Friday 16th October

It has been a busy week. After our relaxing start at the beach we drove back to Mexico City fully recovered from jetlag and and opportunity to see a little of the countryside. We met with Yves and Pierre from Cavas de Francia who distribute the wine. Astrolabe samples had been released but the first shipment was held up in customs. Fingers crossed it will be released soon. That evening Simon presented the wines to an impressive group of about 80.  Yves translated as our Spanish is non existent.

The next day we lead a tutored tasting at Citimarket  which is an upmarket supermarket. Simon had had an interview with the Food and Wine editor of La Reforma the local paper earlier in the day. Today he had another interview with a columnist from the same paper.

Tomorrow we head home. Mexico has been a fantastic place to visit and I hope the wines do well here. Looking forward to getting home and seeing how the chooks, cat, garden and everyone are. Big week next week as Libby turns 22 and Simon 50!!!!!!!!

- Jane

It isn’t easy being  green of any shade. So what shade is Durvillea? Well I’m not sure. I suppose it depends how you measure it. Claiming to be environmentally friendly is a dangerous game. How do you measure it? Do you need to pay up to be certified as carbon neutral , how do measure that carbon footprint? So what words do you use to describe a way of living.

For me this is part of my everyday life. So this is what do we do.

Jane's bike at Astrolabe Farm beside her Olive Oil and recycling baskets. How green is that?!

I recycle.I take my own bags shoping. I grow vegetables and keep chickens, produce our own wine and olive oil. I buy freerange pork and chicken. I ride my bike to work when I can. I always hang my washing outside or on the verandah. I don’t spray the roses or the olives. We mulch all the pruning’s from the property. We drive small cars. We have extensive gardens and trees. We are planting an area of the vineyard as a firewood coppice. The idea is that the carbon absorbed from the atmosphere as the tree grows balances the carbon released during combustion.

Alder trees for coppicing firewood

Sounds good, maybe apple green.

But…..

I use roundup to control weeds, I buy coffee from overseas, I fly overseas to sell wine and sometimes just for pleasure, the mulcher  runs off a diesel tractor, I still buy commercial cleaning products.  Okay pale apple green.

So that is how we live but what about the wine. Well, we have a vineyard and we are part of the sustainable vineyard programme as are all the vineyards we source fruit from. They are all certified or working towards it. There is one who isn’t, they are heading the biodynamic way. That makes them bright green and rapidly getting darker.

So when we began Durvillea I wanted to think about how we could make the product itself more environmentally sensitive, aware, lessen the footprint,be more sustainable. The easiest way I thought was to use a lighter weight bottle. Now traditionally the weight of the bottle is equated with quality of the wine. I don’t get it. I don’t really care how big the punt is. However the problem with using a light weight bottle means they are not as strong and when stacked in pallets this can be a problem. In our first run we had a few problems. However aside from the energy used to produce glass it means we  can put more bottles in a container  which means less carbon footprint. Hooray- a measurable thing.

Durvillea Cartons

Then we decided to use cardboard cartons without overgloss and a limited amount of inks. However when they get wet they get soggy. Then we used a label made from recycled materials but when the wine was put in an icebucket the labels scuffed. We have had to revert to a normal label until we can source a more suitable recycled paper. We have continued with the carton and a light weight bottle. We are trying. It’s not easy being green.

So what colour green am I? I haven’t done the sums, I am sensitive, aware, and my footprint is pretty average. I think sustainable is the word I would use. I think that makes me seaweed green.

PS. Meg is going to teach me to make cleaning products  when she comes home next.

Jane's hedge

PPS. I’ve been trimming the hedges at Astrolabe Farm, and this is what I’m aiming for…..

Hedge friends (Edendale, Southland)

PART ONE HERE

Sunday 30th August – It is pouring with rain here and I have just been down to visit the chickens. Wet chickens look very dismal. They were hoping I would open the gate. So now they are huddled in the coop looking very disappointed with life.

After my saga with Hillary and Roger I was a little shattered and the flock was depleted to 2 remaining hens, Winnie and Dot. However Barb Sutton came to the rescue.

Now Barb is really a legend in her own time. Barb is proprietor of Birchmore Farm at Blind River and is the purveyor of a variety of farm produced goods at the local farmer’s market. After asking her where she bought her chickens from she turned up with 3 lovely ladies in cardboard boxes. Bess, black, beautiful and the leader of the pack. She was named after the black haired daughter in the poem “The Highwayman”. May, (Mayflower) the barred Plymouth Rock and Hettie, small, red and by far the smartest of all the hens. However as the mother of 3 redheads I firmly believe that this is not a coincidence.

So the girls established themselves and I decided that there was room for more. Egg megalomania. I wanted more. Also for some extraordinary reason I love chickens. So I bought 2 baby wyandottes, Mihipeka and Fran, and a very beautiful little black silkie. Now silkie’s have a ridiculous topnot that looks very much like a Russian ladies fur hat, think Dr Zhivago. I was tempted to call her Anna from Anna Karenina but Antionette she became. She was very sweet but definitely the odd one out. I was concerned about how she would fit in with the others who are all large bodied hens. Hens are not into individuality. Obviously this concerned her too as she drowned herself in the pond. I suspect she dipped her head in and the weight of the water in that fabulous topknot was her undoing. I was devastated and feeling that the trials of chicken keeping were just too much much. However the needs of the survivors meant I had to keep going.

I kept Fran and Mihipeka separate for 2 months and integrated them slowly with the others. Carefully lifting them as they roosted into the hen house. The pecking order establishment thing is an unpleasant process.

Daily I let the hens out to free range and one day I came home to find May ripped to bits in the olive grove. She had been killed by a dog and while I don’t have an eye witness account I suspect “Basil” a Jack Russell who sometimes roams to our vineyard. I am not fond of dogs especially small chicken killing dogs.

So now I am down to my fabulous five. Egg production is up. They spend more time penned to protect them but it is roomy. I plan to add some girls soon.

Sunday 6th September: I began this post a week ago and the weather this weekend was fantastic. I have spent the weekend in the garden. Today I picked 2 spears of asparagus the perfect accompaniment to a poached egg. Winter has passed, spring is here and life is good down on the farm.

- Jane.

So home and one of my first jobs was to check on the chickens. They are starting to lay again and  my two young ones for the first time. Now, I currently have 5 chickens. Three are Wyandottes, one red, one black. Beautiful but not the best layers.

Cautionary tale No1: if you want a reliable supply get Brown Shavers.

My chicken keeping began in an impetuous way. I was at dinner with friends when one, Lorraine, asked if anyone wanted a rooster. She had one that was being picked on and was in emergency housing until a new home could be found. I said I would have him. So Roger arrived to live in the dog run.

I loved Roger. He was beautiful and benign. At least I thought so.

Cautionary Tale No2: don’t judge a rooster by his tail feathers.

Roger in the olive grove

Next, Pete, an old chap at the gym, offered me some girlfriends for Roger and so I inherited 3 beautiful but aging golden laced wyandottes, Winnie, Dot and Hillary. Unfortunately Roger just couldn’t cope and began to attack Hillary. He become, I am sorry to relate, a sexual maniac. He attacked Hillary so badly she was almost dead. The chicken house looked like a scene from a horror movie . So it was obvious that poor old Hiliary needed to be put out of her misery. So I took the axe shaking, but just as I raised the axe, telling myself I had to do it, my sister grabbed the axe and did it for me. You see I had just had my hip replaced and in those early days there is a chance that you could dislocate with bending. I don’t think swinging an axe is recommended.

Winnie, Dot and Hillary

Cautionary tale No 3: It’s not all eggs, and fluffy chicks keeping chickens. You need someone who will dispatch the chickens (ie. a chicken executioner).

So now Roger was back in the dog kennel in isolation and despite my best efforts at rehabilitation he continued unrepentant to attack the remaining girls. So with the help of Sophie a contract was placed on his head and a young man from another winery did the deed.

Cautionary tale No4: stay on the right side of Sophie

That’s all for part one, sorry it’s been a bit grim! I’ll be back soon with part two and more tales of life, death, and free-ranging.

- Jane.