Central Otago
Home to the worlds most southerly wine grapes, despite it’s southerly home it’s the only New Zealand region that isn’t heavily influence by the sea. As in Martinborough Pinot Noir rules the roost, but here it accounts for around 75% of grapes grown. Within the region are several districts which tend to get overlooked in
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Marlborough
No series on New Zealand is complete without the mention of Marlborough – it does after all account for a whopping 75% of wine produced in New Zealand and the vast majority of it is Sauvignon Blanc. It tell’s you something when the biggest selling wine in Australia at the moment is Oyster Bay Sauvignon,
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A couple of wines…
Our blog tends to spend more of it’s time telling you fairly generic things about regions, wineries, events or the like but today is different. It’s not even a work day for a start, but whilst I’m say at home, I’ve washed up, I’ve made lunch, cooked the dinner, mowed the lawn and my wife
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Martinborough
Martinborough, or indeed it’s slightly larger surrounding appellation of Wairarapa (Not to be confused with Waipara which is on South Island) is a region that is almost completely irrelevant not only to global production, but even to New Zealand production where it makes up just over 2.5% of production. That of course does the whole
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Hawkes Bay
Whilst Marlborough steals all the limelight, Hawkes Bay is slowly but surely increasing in importance. Situated around Napier on the North Island the climate of New Zealand’s second most important region is warmer than Marlborough and because of the sea influence has a long growing season. For this reason it is the most important region
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Quantity or Quality?
Tim just made an interesting observation about the difference in focus of vintage reports between traditional regions and new producing areas. Two recent articles on the Harpers website prompted his comment http://www.harpers.co.uk/news/news-headlines/10657-bumper-harvest-for-australia.html and http://www.harpers.co.uk/news/news-headlines/10661-new-zealand-harvest-up-23-.html . Both focus primarily on the volume of wine produced, with Yvonne May’s comment “Early indications are that there will be
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Felton Road
The home page for this devotedly biodynamic vineyard in Bannockburn, Central Otago takes the form of a calendar, and the following is from the page for this month: “Time to make sure the Kid Nanny Goats are moved away from their mothers so that when the Buck arrives the mothers are ready to come into
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Domain Road Video
Domain Road Vineyards
A few years ago (three maybe?) Graeme and Gillian Crosby arrived at our cellar shop in Banbury with some samples of their Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc. A new vineyard with no representation in the UK, they were looking for some merchants to take a few cases of their wines but the turn up and
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Austrian Wine Summit Day 4
I woke up on the final morning of the Summit feeling somewhat jaded, the madness of the previous few days along with business before I arrived started to catch up with me and so the earlier than normal start I hoped would allow a little sleep on the coach. But no, our first destination was
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