Trying to Cook in NZ

For the second time in one week, Nina and I had the same day off. This time, I took a day off so we could enjoy this country. On Saturday, we went to the Marlborough Wine Festival. It is the longest running festival in New Zealand and turned out to be an amazing time. There were 60 wineries showing 372 different wines. Along with that there were food stands offering mostly seafood, but they had other great things too. And just so people didn’t get too bored there was music all afternoon, a fashion show and a wine and food pairing competition. There were a couple thousand people there and everyone was having a very good time. People were dressed up in their garden dresses and hats and people in flip flops and shorts.

Nina and I decided to divide and conquer; neither of us could get wine from the same producer. We ended up trying 17 different wines, mostly Pinot Noir, but we threw in a couple of whites too. Overall, the wines were very good. There were a few losers of course, but overall, it was a very nice tasting. The best of the day was probably the Gravitas 2006 Pinot Noir. It was in the French style and just tasted better than any of the others we drank that day. It had excellent balance of tannins and fruit along with a nice earthy flavor. There is a list at the bottom of everything we had. We also decided to try out some of the wine and food pairings. I started with some Oysters Mornay paired with a viognier, the light sweet wine was totally overpowered by the smokey bacon in the first oyster I had. But, the second oyster was a little bigger and there was less bacon, so it wasn’t such a bad pairing. The oysters were great though. The next pairing I had was a greenshell mussel and watercress fritter with horopito aioli paired with an unoaked chardonnay. This one was very good; the fritters were nice and tender with a little bite to them along with a mildly spicy aioli. The wine complimented it very well. Nina decided on a Thai beef salad with lemongrass and chili jam sorrel bean sprouts (I don’t know what that means). It was good and went with the sweet wine well. We spent all day there wandering around, watching the crowd, drinking wine and enjoying a beautiful afternoon.

What we drank:
Nina
Isabel Estate Vineyard 2007 Pinot Gris
Endeavour Vineyard 2007 Crowded House Sauvignon Blanc
Vavasour Wines Ltd Clifford Bay Pinot Noir
Montana Reserves Riesling
Gravitas 2006 Pinot Noir
Spy Valley Wines 2007 Noble Chardonnay
Hunters Wines NZ 2006 Pinot Noir
Seresin Estate 2006 Pinot Gris

Dan
Clos Marguerite 2006 Pinot Noir
Saint Clair Estate 2007 Premium Viognier
Triplebank Awatere Valley Riesling
Lake Chalice2007 “Cracklin Rosie” Pinot Rose
Tohu Wines 2007 Unoaked Chardonnay
Momo Wine 2006 Chardonnay
Maho 2007 Pinot Gris
Forrest Estate 2007 Sauvignon Blanc
Stoneleigh Rapaura Series Pinot Noir

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.