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Hi to all the wine and web friends of Hatton Estate,
This week we are without our irreverent script writer Rachel as she is off to Canada on her belated honeymoon with her wine maker husband Liam.
Before Rachel left she organised a whirlwind of events for us to attend, chief among which was the Heritage & Character Inns conference in Wellington where we hosted the welcoming drinks party with a wine tasting event showcasing EC2 Chardonnay, Miro Merlot, Big Shed Red, Reserve 2004 and snuck in a bottle or two of Turtle Bay Savvy and Syrah much to everyones delight. Click here to try our home wine tasting 6 pack special of these wines.
My thanks to all those attendees especially Rob from Tauhara Sunrise in Taupo for introducing us to the event. Later most attendees headed off to enjoy the delights of Blair St and the Courtney District in Wellington and we took a few hardy souls off to one of our favourite dining come cocktail bar come nightspot called the Matterhorn in the Cuba district.
See photos of this click here- I am a bit shabby (YES I hear you shout) on names so be the first person to email me with the name or names of those in the photos gets a free bottle of Reserve 2004.
The crew at the Matterhorn were very gracious as our table was once again larger than the booking on a busy Friday night and they poured some spectacular wines, of course my favourites were The Doctor Syrah 2005 and Tahi 2004- no surprise there!
As usual for the D-Ks in June we hosted a few dinners at our house with friends in the industry and trawled through many wines of the world, tasting and matching to Colleens spectacular cooking. The Winehot dinner with Jane and Julien of the eclectic winebar restaurant Winehot of Morningside in Auckland was one of these, a great evening of food fun and laughter and the odd bottle of wine. Some photos here show me up again, with Rachel behind the camera lens this is usually the case!
Colleen's Alibaba and forty thieves was the dish of the evening, going very well with some 1999 Chateau Musar from Lebanon, as well as a 2000 Barbera from Bricco de Uccell'one in Italy, our own Tahi 1998 and the Roc des Cambes a Cotes du Bourg from 2003. EC2 Chardonnay 2006 and some Chant des Vignes a Juracon Sec from Domaine Cauhape kicked us off with the vegetable antipasti, but with two chefs, a winemaker, a sommelier and two hedonistic wine tasters (Rachel and moi) no wine held centre stage for long! Well maybe the Tahi 1998 or the wine which was the precursor to our Syrah from 2003 or the two that turned up naked, or the Cotes or the Ballet d Octobre from Dme Cauhape at the end- yes one of those nights!
At the winery we are dealing with the very good wines from 2007 , and preparing to bottle our Doctor Syrah 2006 soon, which we are all excited about. We shall send out a special email when thats ready!
Our new wine shop online shopping cart went live very quietly during the last week, and all the bugs are out now so if you fancy a bottle or two for the coming weekend get in today for a look, we have some good specials running to kick things off
Cheers and remember EAT WELL DRINK BETTER
The gourmet team at Hatton Estate
Bizarre wine fact: Until 2003 NZ made roughly the same amount of wine as Canada. Do you see Canadian wine in the supermarket or on restaurant lists in London? It's the recent surge in plantings of Savvy Blanc and Pinot Noir in NZ and a couple of benign seasons that have taken us to double their output- NZ in 2007 was 205,000 tonnes or 15.9 million cases, or about what the chaps at [yellowtail] sell in the USA alone.
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