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.

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!

With ten fantastic entries for how to enjoy Pinot Noir, we all found it too hard to decide on a winner! So we ended up picking it out of a hat this morning. The winner of the first July competition for the “Best way to enjoy Pinot Noir” is Kate Fisher. Kate Fisher likes to drink Pinot Noir in the sounds while the sun is setting with salty hair and skin under warm clothes after a long day of fine entertaining with best marlborough friends! Kate we have a mixed six pack of Durvillea Wines coming your way. Please email us sophie@durvillewines.co.nz with your address.

Do you want to go in the draw to win a mixed six pack of wine too? At the moment my favourite wine is the Pinot Grigio, so for the new competition this week, we want to know your Best food match with Pinot Grigio, it can be a recipe or simply a food wine match. Just comment on this blog below for your chance to go in the draw!

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 6pack 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

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!

We set up the tent the day before and were very pleased as all the hard work Jane had put in making decorations was well worth it. We went for a green and brown palette for the Durvillea stall and a pretty gothic dark look for the Astrolabe side. The big pile of real life Durvillea seaweed and the handmade pinnies were a particular hit.

We were a little worried when we arrived on site to very heavy rain. It is local Marlborough lore that it never rains on festival day. However the rain cleared up about eleven and the rest of the day was very sunny and hot. Since the temperature was so high our chilled white wines were very popular. There was particular interest in the Pinot Grigio with punters interested in the choice to go with Pinot Grigio rather than the more usual Pinot Gris. There are two reasons that we call it Pinot Grigio, one is that we sell wine in the UK where they are more used to seeing Pinot Grigio’s and the other is a stylistic decision as the winemakers are aiming toward creating a wine more in the Northern Italian style as opposed to a French style.

I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk to people about our wines. It is equally nice introducing the wines to new customers who haven’t heard of us before as it is meeting self described “Durvillea fans”. We also got a chance to catch some of the musical acts. Sophie went to watch Ladi 6, Henry, Claire and I were impressed with Liam Finn and Jane discovered Gin Wigmore. After the festival we packed up and headed back to Astrolabe Farm where Arabella was busy preparing lots of her delicious pizzas. Today I’m hoping that the rain holds off so I can get all the aprons dried!

Jane and Simon are headed down to Gore today for a tasting and Sophie and Jason are off to Melbourne tommorow. As I write this now in the Blenheim office people are busy planning the upcoming harvest with Jeremy our viticulturist and winemaker Tim. Looks like another very busy week for the Astrolabe/Durvillea team. For more photos from the Wine Fest check out our flickr page!

- Meg

Hemi and Bridget from Wineworks

Luckily we have a great team at Wineworks Marlborough (where we store and dispatch our wine from) who also work as hard as they can to get our orders out!

Not only have we had an increase in orders, but we have especially had an increase in Durvillea orders as we start to get more recognition as a brand and for our wine. The Durvillea Pinot Grigio just won Blue Gold and Top 100 at the Sydney International Wine Competition 2010, which we are particularly pleased about.

As I have mentioned previously, we were approached by David Jensen several months ago in regards to supplying the l”Astrolabe ship with wine, on its recent trip to Antarctica. As the ship was called l’Astrolabe we thought it seemed fitting that we supplied the wine, giving them a mixed case of Astrolabe and a mixed case of Durvillea. The ship finally set out on Friday 4th December, and reached Antarctica yesterday, to follow the blog of where they are, and how the Mawson Hut restoration is going click here. We look forward to reading about their progress, and hopefully seeing a few photos of Durvillea being drunk in Antarctica!

As I also mentioned last time, we have partnered up with Sounday to be the wine for this music event that is held in Hagley Park, 30 January next year. The line up has now been announced, and to buy tickets you can go to the Fabel or RDU website, it will no doubt be a great day, and some of us Durvillea girls will be there wandering round too!

Another exciting event that Jane and I are also already thinking about is the Marlborough Wine and Food Festival, this is a couple of weeks later on the 13th February, this is the first time Durvillea will be at this festival, so we want to do it well.

With all these things coming up, there is lots to plan and organise, the 2009 Durvillea Pinot Noir was just bottled on Friday. As we have made so little of it, it must be allocated out so that everyone who has requested and is interested in it has enough to last them through to the next vintage, this is always a bit of a guessing game, but generally seems to work!

Another thing that must be organised is Christmas, as I write this, I have just come back from Nelson where I finally started my Christmas shopping! This year we are having Christmas in Christchurch (home) with the Forrest- Waghorns (mum’s side) and the McLernons (dad’s) all of us cousins are all around the same age, so I am looking forward to catching up with them all and having a few drinks with the family!

Merry Christmas everyone, till next year! Sophie