PINOT ENVY

My partner (Her Indoors) travels a bit with her job. It used to be to China and South East Asia but now is domestic travel. She works as a marketer for an engineering company and so visits the company's offices around New Zealand working on project bids.
She has been to Queenstown a bit recently, usually for 3 or 4 days. She works long hours but at least on one of the evenings gets to go to the excellent wine bar Wine Tastes (see here) WINE TASTES


When there she texts or rings me to tell me what wines she is trying (you can sample - at a price- any number of top class wines or buy a glass).  These are usually Pinot Noirs. I used to go to Queenstown quite a bit in my previous life but Wine Tastes wasn't open then. I'll have to make a trip there soon.

One good thing about her travels though is that in helping out at the various offices around the country and putting in the extra yards, it is appreciated by her colleagues who show their thanks by buying her gifts. Fortunately, somewhere along the line, they have realised that she appreciates good wine (at company dinners and nights out they give her the wine list to choose the wine). Also fortunately, somewhere along the line she has told them that she doesn't drink Sauvignon Blanc but adores Pinot Noir. As a consequence we are seeing some very good and very expensive bottles of New Zealand Pinot Noir coming our way. I say 'we' and 'our' because of course my beloved shares the wine with me.
Tonight we are drinking a Pisa Range Black Poplar Block 2008 Pinot Noir from Cromwell Basin Central Otago. Believe it or not this is the latest release. It is a monster which will take time to develop.
It is very rich with a surprising colour for its age. Delightful drinking now this is only going to get better.
Either I'll have to buy some or Her Indoors will need to be rewarded with some more of this.

We are drinking the 2008 

Wew had the 2009 vintage

Last week we had the Valli 2009 Bannockburn Pinot Noir from Central Otago. This was bloody good New Zealand Pinot Noir too, quite different from the Pisa Range. It was more savoury and complex (as Martinborough Pinot Noirs can be) but with strong, sweet fruit and a bit of tannic backbone.




Now I've been a bit critical of Central Otago Pinot Noirs having had a view that they are overpriced for the quality. This I think has been the case in the past but we are now seeing more offerings at the top with prices tempered by the volumes of cheaper wines at the bottom. While still expensive (in New Zealand terms) at $50 - $80 a bottle, they are now delivering and on a world scale represent good value for money.


My first favourite though is Waipara Pinot Noir. To me, Waipara gives a combination of: the best savoury notes of Martinborough without the dodginess of variable vintages; the richness and power of Central Otago without the dense beetroot notes and chunky plum and black cherry fruit; and a delicate cherry character that defines Marlborough but with more oomph, length and character.
I'll just have to get Her Indoors to subtly imply that Waipara Pinot Noir is her best favourite without cutting off the supply of these excellent Central Otago wines. Then, hopefully we might see some excellent Waipara wines like Muddy Waters Hare's Breath Pinot Noir.

I guess I'll have to be a bit Machiavellian in my approach.

MESHACH

OK, OK, sorry about that but I thought it was funny. I've always liked the B52's (Love Shack is just about the only song that I will ever get up to dance to).

So. Meschack.

Me·shach  (mshch)In the Bible, a young man who with Abednego and Shadrach emerged unharmed from the fiery furnace of Babylon. For all those bible-bashers out there. For me, Meshack represents the best red wine that Grant Burge, from South Australia, produces. The fruit (Shiraz) is from the lovely Filsell vineyard, hand-picked, and added to similarly old-vine parcels (we are talking about 100 y.o.+ vines here) from around the Barossa Valley. About 6 years ago Lynn and I spent a glorious 3 weeks in the best wine regions of Australia and when in the Barossa Valley visited Grant Burge Wines and bought the 2001 Meshach. They keep it back for about 5 years before releasing it. Knowing that this is a great wine that gets subtly better with age we have kept it in the cellar. Tonight, having cooked a slow-cooked lamb dish, we thought that a wine of this calibre and age would suit the meal and a cool and rainy night. Right?  Yes, right. The wine is delicious. Unctuous. Smooth. Rich and delightful. With hints of violets lurking amongst the plum, blackberry and spicy flavours this has a surprising mix of richness, strength and power along with smoothness and elegance.  So, who cares? Well, frankly I do as I love wine. I love the wine industry and I am so annoyed that supermarkets and new, uneducated and inexperienced retailers are dominating the industry. The old-style wine merchants are unfortunately a thing of the past having died off, retired (my old mate Peter Rumble packed it in recently) or have been driven out of the business. Most people nowadays don't get the opportunity to try quality wines that have been well cellared and drunk at the optimum time because there are very few people out there, at the coalface as it were to advise them. We, luckily have a lot of nice wines maturing in our cellar. I am concerned however that the wines I 'laid down' some years ago are all going to mature at the same time and replacements are so much more expensive. We may have to sell off some of the gems of which we have multiple bottles and replace with newer vintages.

TORA TORA TORA - OR TORREMOLINOS

If you didn't get through the sketch here is a transcript.

“What’s the point of going abroad if you’re just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea — “Oh they don’t make it properly here, do they, not like at home” — and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney’s Red Barrel and calamares and two-veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White’s suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh ‘cos they “overdid it on the first day.” And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Continentals with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they’re acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues and if you’re not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting “Flamenco for Foreigners.” And adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel and once a week there’s an excursion to the local Roman remains to buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleeding Watney’s Red Barrel and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local color and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing “Torremolinos, torremolinos” and complaining about the food — “It’s so greasy isn’t it?” — and you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday’s Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up over the Cuba Libres. And sending tinted postcards, of places they don’t realize they haven’t even visited, to: “All at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an ‘X’. Food very greasy but we’ve found a charming little local place hidden away in the back streets where they serve Watney’s Red Barrel and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner’.” And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA-type sandwiches and you can’t even get a drink of Watney’s Red Barrel because you’re still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you’re thirsty and there’s nowhere to sleep and the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ash-trays and they keep telling you it’ll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac till six because of “unforeseen difficulties”, i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris — and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody’s swallowing “enterovioform” and queuing for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that isn’t there to take you to the hotel that hasn’t yet been finished. And when you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel del Sol by paying half your holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi you find there’s no water in the pool, there’s no water in the taps, there’s no water in the bog and there’s only a bleeding lizard in the bidet. And half the rooms are double booked and you can’t sleep anyway because of the permanent twenty-four-hour drilling of the foundations of the hotel next door — and you’re plagued by appalling apprentice chemists from Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class stockbrokers’ wives busily buying identical holiday villas in suburban development plots just like Esher, in case the Labour government gets in again, and fat American matrons with sloppy-buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up long enough when they finally let it all flop out. And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a case of mild Spanish tummy, like the previous outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and decimated Europe — and meanwhile the bloody Guardia are busy arresting sixteen-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under nineteen who doesn’t like Franco. And then on the last day in the airport lounge everyone’s comparing sunburns, drinking Nasty Spumante, buying cartons of duty free “cigarillos” and using up their last pesetas on horrid dolls in Spanish National costume and awful straw donkeys and bullfight posters with your name on “Ordoney, El Cordobes and Brian Pules of Norwich” and 3-D pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco, and everybody’s talking about coming again next year and you swear you never will although there you are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a tourist-tight antique Iberian airplane…”

So, the point is? The Japanese, on 7th December 1941 attacked the American base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii early on a Sunday morning knowing that most of the base would be either at Church or in bed or suffering from a bit of bevvy the previous night.

On Friday night, as I was sipping a long-looked-forward-to glass of Chardonnay, I was thinking that all around New Zealand, if not the Christian world (at the appropriate GMT time) anyone who drinks alcohol would be enjoying after-work drinks and probably continuing on to more during the evening. There is a very high liklihood that there are more pissed people on a Friday night than any other day of the week.
If I was a planner for Muslim terrorism I'd take a leaf out of Tojo's book and attack the Westerners on a Friday night or early Saturday morning.

Check this report from The Daily Mirror:

-       German soldiers too fat to fight the Taliban."

-       A report by Germany's Parliament found forces in Afghanistan got through more than 1.7 million pints of beer and 92,000 bottles of wine last year. They are already on track to top those figures this year, with 901,000 pints of beer and 56,000 bottles of wine being shipped in the first six months. US forces are not allowed to drink, while British soldiers are allowed only small quantities while off-duty.  Earlier this year, another report found that 40 per cent Germany's 3,600 soldiers in Afghanistan were overweight.
-       This has prompted Reinhold Robbe, Parliamentary Commissioner for the armed forces, to observe: "Plainly put, the soldiers are too fat, exercise too little and take little care of their diet."  There was also a stinging assessment given by the head of Germany's crack commando squad, the KSK. In a frank outburst, General Hans-Christoph Ammon, whose soldiers are fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban, said the scheme to train Afghan police – for which Germany is responsible – had been "a miserable failure".
-       He said the German Government had put just 12 million towards training the Afghan Army and police. "At that rate, it would take 82 years to have a properly trained police force," he told Deutsche Press Agency.

So there!

LA VIE EN LAROSE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IJzYAda1wA

Tonight we had dinner with our holiday neighbours Murray and Christine. They have a holiday house near us in McLeod Bay. As Lynn and I are working in Auckland each week our house, whilst not intended to be so, is by default our holiday house where we try and spend each weekend.
Now you would think that early January would mean that dinner would be a BBQ , eating on the deck after a swim in the water across the road but not this Summer. It has rained all day with strong cold winds. This is the same weather (but colder) that we have experienced through Christmas and New Year.
Dinner then is an in-doors, sit-down affair at the dining table and will be oven baked fare - venison, roast beetroot, Dauhinoise potatoes etc. followed by a fruit and custard tart. So. What to drink with this. Fortunately Murray, last weekend, gave us two bottles to 'stand' ready for the Saturady night dinner. He is one of the lucky few who each year manage to get their hands on Stonyridge Larose. It was Murray who provided the 2009 and 2008 vintages we drank ast year see: A Special Treat

2007 and 2009 Larose rady for imbibing

This year we had the 2007 and the 2009 vintages to compare. The 2009 was not much changed from what it was like last year. Big, bold, tannic with dense and still subdued fruit. This is a keeper and will take a while to hit its straps. The 2007 was more approachable and elegant. It too has dense fruit but some lighter edges and a bit of greenness. It will also keep for a while but perhaps not as long as the 2009. We were a bit geekish and got our guests to fill out tasting sheets (Lynn's idea - honest) which was a good exercise in evaluating the wines properly. This was done before dinner and before the Pool challenge so sensory evaluation was possible and fairly accurate. During and after dinner though we consumed a bottle of 1998 Penfolds Bin 389, a bottle of Moet and a bottle of Johanneshof Gewurtztraminer. Oh, did I mention the Seresin Chardonnay? Well, we only consumed half a bottle of that before the red wine tasting.

The Pool challenge was a draw this year - 1 game each - the wine kind of overpowered the stamina and ability to play.

It is a slow morning here, but, as it is still overcast with a bit of rain, a good morning to watCh television. I just saw "How to look at a landscape" - a brilliant essay on New Zealand painting.
I couldn't find an image of Robin White's stunning 'New Garden' but here is a classic Colin McCahon one.

GO FIGURE

We have had a problem with a back label on a wine product sent to China recently.
The Chinese Customs have held up the shipment because the wording on the back label does not exactly match the wording on the invoice.

The wording difference?

On the invoice, in addition to the varietal, vintage and other mandatories is the wording:

(Brand company)'s New Zealand Dry Red Wine

On the back label, along with all the important mandatories including varietal, vintage etc. is the wording:

New Zealand (Brand company)'s Dry Red Wine.

Now the writing on this back label is in Chinese.
The print company for some reason substituted the agreed label artwork for a previous one so that the wording is not in the same order as the invoice.
The line of words in question has exactly  the same number and type of characters on each of the label variants so was virtually impossible to distinguish if one was compared to the other. All of the other Chinese characters on this back label (about 15 lines of it, describe the wine, where it was made, who it was made by, who it is being shipped to, what date it was bottled etc. All of this information is the same on each label and has the same number, type (and order) of characters.

Knowing this we can now simply change the invoice to read exactly as the label but the importer has lost a couple of weeks in the process.

This from a country that regularly poisons people in their own country and around the world with dodgy foodstuffs, illegal and dangerous additives and totally non-compliant labelling.

Go figure!

COUNTING THE DRINKS TWO THREE FOUR FIVE....

This song gob-smacked me in 1981. I thought it one of the cleverest and catchy pop tunes ever and it still hits the spot.
If I substituted the word 'beat' for 'drinks' it would also be appropriate for Christmas and New Year drinking.

"Look at the sunrise
I look at it burn
I look into your eyes
Don't know where to turn
I'm gonna drift into that void
I'm flying through space, I'm an asteroid
Time doesn't take place when you're paranoid
I'm thinking about you, and nothing else
Thinking about you, you're thinking about me
Thinking about you, I'm counting the beat
Thinking about you
Thinking about me
Thinking about just you and me, la da de de, there ain't no place I'd rather be
La da de da, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da
La da de da, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da
La da de da, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!
I'm bleeding to death
On a cloudless day
A three, a four heartbeat
A waltzin' away...
Oooh ooh, oo oo
Oooh ooh, oo oo
Oooh ooh, oo oo
Oooh ooh, oo oo
I'm counting the beat 2 3 4 5, I'm feeling the heat to be alive
I'm counting the beat 6 7 8 9, I'm wishing that you,
That you were mine
Thinking about you, you're thinking about me
Thinking about you and counting the beat
Thinking about you
Thinking about me
Thinking about you...
Thinking about me...
Thinking about you.....
Thinking about,
Just you and me, la da de de, there ain't no place I'd rather be
La da de da, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da
La da de da, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da
La da de da, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da
La da de da, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da
La da de da, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da
La da de da, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da
La da de da, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da
La da de da, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da
La da de da, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da"

I'm moving a bit slow this morning, not crawling exactly but I haven't gone running, kayaking or golfing so far.

Normally I count the drinks I consume or at least have a fair idea of the quantity as I invariably only drink wine.

One glass fine - usually when cooking.
Two glasses OK
Three glasses better
Four glasses - oops, gone over half the bottle
Five glasses - that's a bottle gone, glad its a Friday night
Six glasses - now why on earth did I open that second bottle?
Seven glasses - where was the count, better start from the beginning
Eight glasses - ..................................................................................

Now one swallow doesn't make a summer and eight swallows doesn't make an alcoholic but really, I'd rather not go beyond the five.

The trouble is, at festive occasions it is easily to lose track of the drinks. Yesterday, after a good and healthy walk we went next door to the neighbours for Christmas drinks. This was very pleasant and I had three (smallish) glasses of bubbles. This was Deutz Methode which is always a good buy around Christmas time. I did detect a bit of simplicity though and worry that too much specialling has made them engineer the wine downwards (less time on lees perhaps).

Anyway, after these three glasses (Her Indoors had two) we we went home to prepare our Christmas dinner that this year we were having on our own. I opened a bottle of Veuve Cliquot NV. This is a good Marque and not as sweet as its cousin Moet & Chandon. I bought it from Countdown supermarket at a ridiculous mark-down so had a bit of a saving there.

A word of caution. Never buy Champagne off a shelf whether in a supermarket or a bottle store. The wine exposed to sunlight and fluorescent light will be dull, not flat exactly, but will have lost some of its pzazz. when you are paying $50 plus its that pzazz that you want. I always ask for a bottle to be taken out of a carton.

We both had two glasses of Champagne before dinner which was roast lamb (Her Indoors had left the very large chicken in the fridge back in Auckland) and vegetables followed by her sublime trifle (the sponge liberally dosed with La Grande Passion (Grand Marnier's passion-fruit liqueur that we have had for many years).

With the meal we had two glasses each of Marie Zelie 2003 Pinot Noir. This is the Martinborough Vineyards wine that is still going powerfully.

By this time I was feeling a bit tired and went to bed before 11. This morning as I said was a slow start.

How many drinks had I had?

I counted - La da de dee, la da de da, la da de da, la da de da - Seven!

Now that may not seem that much but the first three were on an empty stomach so I guess my body would have been happier with at least one less.

Oh well. Another walk will be on the cards today sometime.

WHERE EVERYONE GETS A BARGAIN

I bought a couple of cases of pretty good Pinot Noir this week off a wine-selling website I use. I am always on the hunt for good Pinot Noir and Chardonnay on this site where winemakers with surplus wines sell them off cheap.

I bought Muddy Water Pinot Noir for $21 a bottle not long ago and have seen it in Glengarry recently for $87.00 a bottle. The wine was superb - the price even better.




The wine I bought this week was also from Waipara (in my mind the source of New Zealand's best Pinot Noir and Riesling). The recommended retail price is $39.99. The special price is $14.99. This is a whopping $25 off per bottle. The wine is bloody good and I am happy.

The winery gives 10% commission to the website owner. Are they happy? They obviously would like to sell it for a higher price. If it was retailed at $39.99 then after a retailer mark-up of 45% say then they could theoretically wholesale it for $24.50 (GST included). They are then giving away at least $10 per bottle by selling it through this clearance site. Why? Because it is a 2009 vintage wine. They obviously have 2010 vintage in bottle. 2011 vintage in barrel and tank. There is the 2012 vintage looming. Pressure on stocks vs low sales volume in depressed markets. Entry into New Zealand retail outlets is becoming increasingly difficult as supermarkets gain market share and want cheaper sell-in prices so that they can discount heavily. All these reasons add up to a winery having to let wine go at a crazily low price.

Are they losing money though? They are certainly not making the money that they most likely forecast some years ago. If that forecast was to a lending bank and not to themselves and supporting friends and family then they are in trouble as we have seen with some wine companies that have gone to the wall recently. These though, to be fair, have bought in high at the top of the market with expectations that the industry was going to continue to boom. It is not unlike the property market or pyramid schemes.

Here is a rough (very rough) production costing for a bottle of wine. This is a very broad average but is fair when considering an expensive quality bottle of wine. Big companies, mass producing big brands have much lower costs but this will suffice for this exercise.

	$
Wine	3.00
Winery overheads	0.10
Bottle	0.80
Labels	0.70
Carton (share)	0.20
Bottling cost	0.15
Excise and ALAC	2.10
Total, say	$7.05 per bottle.

With a RRP of $39.99 even with retailer mark-up of 45% and a decent wholesale margin there is still a whopping great brand/marketing/image component. This is called the Hype. Now there's nothing wrong with the hype - Champagne producers have got away with this for years. Their per bottle costs given the volumes they make is probably not too different and yet they command RRP's of $60 to $160 per bottle.
I would always caution buyers though when buying the fairly standard wines that want $40 plus off you. Is that Chardonnay really worth $60? Does that Waiheke or Hawkes Bay Bordeaux blend or Syrah deserve a price tag of $80? Probably not but hey! If you want it then buy it, but always check out the discount websites first.

By the way. I'm not immune to hype myself. For Christmas I am getting a bottle of Martinborough Vineyards Marie Zelie Pinot Noir 2003 out of the cellar. I paid $170 a bottle for this a few years back. Apart from the outrageously expensive packaging the bottle of wine couldn't have cost more than $10 or $12 to make. Hype? yes. Good drinking? It has been for the other bottles I've had and I'm looking forward to this next one.