A New Year, A New Vintage – Cheers to 2012!

Right now, CCQC and I are touring around Tasmania enjoying beautiful weather and some wonderful Tasmanian wines, while Martinborough, according to the Redbank weather station, seems to have had around 66 millimetres of rain in the last seven days. Not good for the vintage at this stage, but that’s grape-growing for you.

We spent two days in Sydney – hot and sunny, wandering around Rushcutter’s Bay checking out the yachts preparing for the Sydney-Hobart race which departs every Boxing Day. Then we flew to Hobart on Christmas Eve to our first destination, Museum of Old and New Art, or Mona, which is owned by millionaire gambler David Walsh. It’s also home to Moorilla Estate wines. Walsh has sunk over $180 million of his own money into this place and it’s amazing. The pavillions where guests stay are all named after Australian artists or architects. We were staying in Esmond, (Esmond Dorney), only built in January 2011. The furnishings and art are great – a rug on the floor greets you with, “apropos of nothing it’s nice to see you and besides we need the money”. Books in the shelves are all chosen by staff.

I can’t recommend this place highly enough, in fact, it’s worth a trip especially from New Zealand just to see the Museum itself, and Walsh’s art collection which he spent $100 million purchasing. You will be jolted, you will be delighted, you will be charmed. You will definitely not be bored.

For Christmas Day lunch we went to Henry Jones Art Hotel in Hobart – a very long lunch, splendidly executed. I had been a tad grumpy, having been forced to pay by Visa in advance, way back in about October, in full, for all the food and wines, but it was well worth it. All inclusive the price for two of us was $160 each and the wines were very good, not cheap quality, and they kept coming and coming. One stand-out was a Pooley Pinot Grigio. The food defeated me – I couldn’t eat it all. We began with an egg nog. Then a small fresh heirloom tomato salad with fresh buffalo mozzarella. Then ocean trout and fig salad. Then turkey ballotine, compressed potato, and cranberry (by now I was flagging, and couldn’t eat all my turkey). Then a perfect wee Christmas pud with brandy butter. Then (oh no, oh no, get thee behind me Satan) coffee and mince pie. I die I die.

When we’d recovered from this gluttony we drove to our next stop – Priory Lodge at Bothwell, run by the perfect host, Greg Peacock. This was truly charming, and luxurious with a chalet overlooking a lake with swans. We dined in the grand old sandstone manor each night with the other guests – all interesting, lively and chatty. Greg cooked each night, and he had a good cellar, so CCQC and I kept up our usual pace of one white and one red (I’ll leave it to you to work out whether that’s glasses or bottles).

Next stop, the highlight of our tour (in price at least), Saffire Freycinet on the Freycinet Peninsula, where we spent New Year’s Eve, stuffing ourselves silly on the degustation menu. This is probably the equivalent of the anti-health spa, if there is such a thing. The mini-bar is all-inclusive in the price. Dinner, lunch and breakfast are all-inclusive. And if all that food wasn’t enough, we went out for a trip to an oyster farm where we learned all about the life cycle of oysters, then Graeson (who took CCQC and me) spread a crisp white tablecloth on a table in the middle of the water, poured two glasses of Tasmanian bubbly, and shucked some oysters for us. Bliss.

So now here we are in Hadspen, at the Red Feather Inn, which is just lovely. It’s so beautifully and tastefully decorated, managed by Ian and Tanya, with huge glorious gardens, a quince orchard, whitewashed walls, and decorated with French antiques. It also has a cooking school and holds weddings and functions. I can’t begin to describe how lovely this place is, but I’ve taken heaps of photographs (silly me, I’ve left the cord at home which transfers the photos to the computer so can’t put them on the blog!).

If I don’t burst like Mr Creosote from one more wafer thin mint, I will return to New Zealand and Redbank Estate after we visit Cradle Mountain Lodge, and the Islington in Hobart, on January 9, to do some well-needed exercise in the vineyard, which is being ably minded by Mike and Nikki in our absence.

 

Jugs of Happiness

As I write, two fat horses – Smitty and Lily – are cantering along the top of Te Muna’s hill, having just finished their buckets of feed. They don’t need extra treats, because you can almost see the grass growing at the moment, but I like to keep a check on them since their paddock’s 110 acres in size and not exactly easy to trek around. You can guarantee they’ll always turn up at tucker time. Now that Te Muna’s taken his hoggets away to be shorn, the horses have all the luscious grass to themselves, so I’m hoping they’ll be doing more of this cantering up and down the hills.

Speaking of Te Muna, he had his 70th birthday party last weekend and celebrated in style. He even shocked us all by giving a speech, and got his own back on me. He used to hate being referred to on this blog as Farmer Ian, or He Who Must Not Be Named, and since his farm is called Te Muna, we settled on that moniker. I thought his speech was going to be the usual thanks to all, but as he was noting changes in how the farmland had turned to grapegrowing, he veered off and commented that his neighbour was now feeding pikelets to the Black Power. “In fact, she’s sitting right there, Deborah Coddington.”

Talk about spoil my rep. He was right. ‘Black Power’ clean all our windows around here and if you want to keep a good reputation you give them a good morning tea. They were going on to Te Muna’s place after mine, a few weeks back, and I gave them pikelets with jam and whipped cream. When they turned up at Te Muna’s they remarked on this, and I wasn’t very popular for upping the competition.

***

About now is when we’re afflicted by the equinoxes, and the winds blow through the place, flattening everything. The garden seems to get used to it though, and despite the globe artichokes being virtually horizontal (I sowed the seed three years ago) I’m getting masses of artichokes off them - preserving chokes for summer salads. I’ve also had to freeze brocolli which would otherwise have gone to seed. We’re eating our first radishes too.

The grapes are almost flowering, and Rowan is regularly spraying with copper. The mower munted itself on Thursday, worn out after dealing with too many stones in an ancient river bed for four years. It’s a hard life in the Te Muna valley. By Friday, CCQC had bitten the bullet and bought another, wider, mower. Needs must.

Meanwhile the garden is giving us so much joy. All that backbreaking work with Vicki over winter, when she and I were shovelling mulch and soil into the trailer, then shovelling it onto the beds, is rewarding us now. The roses are going to be spectacular. The new beds in the orchard are still looking a little sparse, but I had to resist the urge to overcrowd when planting because it just ends up a mishmash of crushed plants. It never ceases to amaze me how plants disappear over winter (this winter literally smothered in snow) and look dead, only to burst up in spring and shout, “Hello, hooray, look at us, we’re here, we’re alive and full of the joys of life!”

It’s very satisfying when you’ve cleaned the house to pick flowers from your own garden and fill jugs with blooms for every room. Jugs of happiness.

The image opening this post is shy lady, surrounded by sage (a fabulous, trusty flower), artemisia, absinthe, and poppies. In this next photo, she’s also with the yellow banksia rose scrambling up the veranda post.

 

James Viognier 2011

Despite the fact it’s going to be a Rugby World Cup weekend, and we’ll probably have to buy a new couch when this tournament is over, judging by the treatment CCQC is dishing out to the existing one, with his leaping up and down, we do have to bottle the 2011 Viognier tomorrow. This year’s Viognier is shaping up to be amazing – apricots, white peaches, and (I don’t know where this is coming from) – hints of sandalwood scents. Viognier seems to have a flush of beauty about this time after vintage (five to six months) so we’ll bottle it, label it, then get it out there in the market. Unlike most New Zealand Viognier producers, we put our Viognier in Grande Burgundy bottles, with corks. I know I’m a fusspot, but I’m prejudiced against screwcaps. I’m getting to the stage where if someone even opens a bottle of red wine with a screwcap my mouth starts to pucker up.

Nah, it’s just not the same.

And our 2010 Syrah - even the 2011 Syrah, which we were worried would run out of hot sun – are both coming along nicely too. They’ll stay in the barrel a while.

So tomorrow Simon Groves will turn up with the mobile bottling plant, which does around six bottles at once. The bottles are already sterilised, as are the corks (which are printed with ‘James’ – good quality Portugese corks). We rinse the bottles of dust, then place them on the rack which fills them up with lovely wine. Then you take them off and pass them to CCQC who places them on the cork machine and he rams the cork into them. The capsules go on later, in at Martinborough Wine Makers, when the labels are wrapped on the bottles, and they’re packed in boxes of six.

It’s a nice way to spend a morning.

All else is well at Redbank. Spring has warmed up the garden. The fruit trees have blossomed. We’ve had the first meal of globe artichokes, and the broccoli is keeping us in vitamins. The bantams kept laying all through winter, and after Christmas I’ll restock with more hens, and piglets. Meanwhile, there’s just Kete and Scaredy Kat.

Kete was once, as a special treat, allowed inside to catch mice, so she hid herself and tried the surprise element.

And over the road at Te Muna’s the cows are breeding.

And if you’re feeling like visiting Martinborough, why not buy a ticket to our Home and Garden tour? It’s on again, this time on Saturday 12 November, 10am to 5pm, eight totally different houses from last year, with a gourmet picnic lunch at Parehua Country Estate, and we have two country markets, plus three leading Wairarapa artists exhibiting. All proceeds go to the St Andrews Anglican Church Hall, which is used by the whole community for many activities, including breakfast club for the school children.

Here is just one of the houses you’ll be privileged to wander through – it was 2010 House of the Year and it is unbelievably dazzling. Oh – tickets are $70, include lunch, email temuna@xtra.co.nz.

 

Snow at Redbank Estate

I guess it all started when I casually read aloud to CCQC the weather forecast for the weekend from the newspaper and it said snow down to sealevel. Sealevel! Must be a mistake, we thought. But it was no mistake when we woke up on Monday morning to a white vineyard. Not only that, the power had gone off at 4am that morning, and when the power goes off, we have no electricity to power the pump, so no water, and no electricity to power the boiler, so no heating. Actually, we did have partial power as only some phasing had gone off, so we plugged in a heater, and I turned on the oven and opened the door. Very un-green of me, but needs must. It was freezing. But it was beautiful, and down came the snow all day long, covering everything in sight.

The bantams and the duck did not know what was going on. Pip stayed indoors, and refused to let Duck-Duck and Mikki inside. Mikki cowered behind the bantam house, but Duck-Duck, with his waterproofed feathers, seemed to cope okay.

Kete wasn’t going anywhere thankyou very much. A team of surgeons would have been required to remove that fat ginger cat from her straw bed, but Scaredy Kat loved the snow, racing around like crazy, digging holes, rolling around, catching finches. Too fast to take photos. She’s one tough feral pussy.

I wasn’t going anywhere much either.

Of course the horses came down to be fed, and they were all warm and snug under their Wairau covers, breathing steam like dragons.

 By the time we coated ourselves up in ski gear and went out into the vineyard, at around 11.30am, there was a good 10 to 15cm coating of snow on the ground. And still it fell all day. And the next day.

The Rimutaka Hill Road was closed from Sunday night until Thursday so CCQC didn’t go to work (well, he worked from home). You can’t trust the trains, unfortunately, because TranzMetro are so useless, they refuse to put on extra carriages when the road’s closed. And the train broke down one evening, delaying everyone for three hours. (As an aside, I often take the 11am train to Wellington to cover question time in Parliament, and even if that train is crowded, as it often is with pensioners taking advantage of Winston Peters’ gold card, the officious guards won’t let you into the empty carriage but insist you crowd into one of the occupied carriages even if there are no seats, just because they can’t be bothered walking into another carriage to collect tickets.)

When the snow finally melted away, with the bitterly cold rain which managed to kill about 200 lambs on Te Muna’s farm next door, all was restored to normal, cold August winter. Well, I say normal. What’s normal? As I write this, exactly one week later, the sun is pouring through the open double doors, the animals are basking in the warmth, and it feels as if summer is just around the corner. Hard to believe that just seven days ago the temperature here was -4.9 degrees.

 

Was it a Hawk? A Plane? No, a Stoat!

Carnage in the vineyard. A while ago I wrote that we believed a hawk had made off with either Mikki or Nikki – let’s say Mikki - one of the brown bantam hens (impossible to tell them apart). That was bad enough to imagine – a petrified squawking bantam being spirited away to be hawk dinner while poor Mother Pip watched in vain from her helpless position below. But it wasn’t a hawk. It was worse than that.

A few weeks later, in the garden, I found a fairly large slain rabbit; guts ripped out, and attributed this to Scaredy Kat, praising her for earning her keep. Then just a few days later, back working in the garden, I noticed it was eerily quiet. No crowing from Bill the cock bantam. Where was Bill? A quick search found poor Bill, dead as a dodo under the clothesline, throat torn out, guts all eaten up. I know sometimes Bill had driven me crazy with his random shagging of all and sundry, including his own daughters which weren’t even his own kind, I’m talking about the ducks which Pip had raised. And times he’d had to be chased off poor Pip to give her a chance to eat. But heavens to Betsy, he didn’t deserve to die like this. CCQC was mowing the vineyard and I stopped him as he passed in the tractor, held up the carcass of poor Bil, and gave him the bad newsl.

Bill had become part of the family.

I’m sure it was Scaredy Kat, I announced. I’ll have to take her to the vet and have her put down. I can train a dog not to chase poultry, but not a cat.

That night I shut Scaredy Kat in the shed when she went to sleep with Kete. I admit I had a heavy heart, but last in, first out. Ironically, it was CCQC who thought hard and saved her bacon (cat’s bacon, that is). He said, that night, he doubted a little wee cat could savage a vicious bantam rooster in the manner Bill had been torn to bits (Bill, by this time, was buried under the strawberries I’d been lifting and dividing when I’d discovered his poor broken body). Perhaps we had a stoat on the property, CCQC suggested.

More than ‘perhaps’. Next morning, our dear lady duck, Duck Duck, was gone. Couldn’t have been Scaredy Kat, she was still shut in the shed, waiting for her one-way trip to the vet. We did indeed have a stoat.

I’ve never found the duck carcass, but I set the stoat trap and luckily Mr Duck had the good sense after that fateful night to climb into the kennel with Pip and Nikki every night so I could shut them up and keep them protected. I never caught the stoat, but professional trappers are now working in the area, and all seems to be safe these days. Sadly though, our little family is exactly halved. Those bastard stoats. I named the one responsible for our carnage, New Act.

Meanwhile, we decided to have a cleanout of chooks. I got sick of the girls and Winston pooping all over the verandahs, and scratching all through my gardens. Since you can’t move a chookhouse when the chooks get settled in it (because the silly bints won’t roost where the house is shifted to, they return each night to the empty site) as soon as they went off the lay, I gave them all away to Tanya in Carterton (except Winston, who went to one of the vineyard workers to become stock for Tom Yum Goong).

Then CCQC put strops around the chookhouse (Hen Hilton, as the locals have dubbed it, because it’s so posh), picked it up with the tractor forks and carried it further down the drive for me. Now I can still see it from my kitchen window, but it’s hopefully far enough away so when I buy new chooks in the spring, and get them established, they won’t wander up here and settle down on the front and back verandah and poop everywhere.

Can’t say I miss the sound of Winston when he crept up to the window then crowed at the top of his voice. I’d grab a handful of avocado stones, saved especially for the occasion because they don’t upset the lawnmower blades (ergo my husband), charge out the door and fire them at his head while he raced off like the arrogant, vainglorious, bastard bird he was. Very pretty though.

This time I’m counting on getting very calm, lazy, opposite-of-flighty chooks, whatever breed they may be.

In the vineyard, the pruning is nearly completed. We pressed the Syrah on June 25th (our last harvest for the season), and our barrel of Viognier is still bubbling slightly. This year I also – for the first time – bottled some olives from neighbour John’s trees, who has Te Hera vineyard. It’s not such a difficult process, just long and probably more expensive than buying olives. But they taste terrific. I got the recipe from Stephanie Alexander’s book:

Soak in cold water for 40 days, changing the water every second day. On the 40th day, cover for two days with rock salt, then wash thoroughly, pack into sterilised jars with accompaniments of your choice (I used slivers of lemon, or twigs of thyme, or rosemary, or sage), then fill with half red wine vinegar and half olive oil. Leave for two weeks before eating.

 

Harvest Festival

This time of year can by quite satisfying for gardener cooks. Satisfying, yet also anxiety provoking, if time is of the essence. We’ve harvested the Viognier, though I was stuck in Auckland, committed to television appearances because of political shenanigans in the Act and new Mana party. So CCQC and Simon, assisted by Nick and Rowan picked. The little tractor decided to blow itself up, so we borrowed a quad bike from Craggy Range. The Viognier litrage was down, but the brix came in at 24.5 so that’s very good indeed. Small but perfectly formed, and we didn’t even need to inoculate it as after two days in the barrel it’s bubbling away from wild yeasts in the winery.

I had been whisked up to Auckland by the Herald on Sunday to cover the political stuff, while other staff did all-nighters on the Royal Wedding, and came home completely exhausted, so it was lovely to recuperate doing the things I always do when I need to replenish the system – cooking. This year’s been a great year for chillies so I made all the extras into chilli jelly. Chillies are good for losing weight since they speed up the metabolism, and they’re also good for colds and flu because they ease congestion. So we’ve been enjoying chilli jelly on everything from cheese and crackers, to sliced apple. I’ve also been cutting late artichokes, boiling them (with halved lemon to stop them going brown), then peeling away to the hearts, served drizzled with virgin local olive oil and sea salt. What could be more lovely, and more simple? Here’s a beautiful artichoke which did flower – as photographed by Mike White -  in my garden:

My sorrel just loves the bantam tutae it’s grown in. Thriving. I picked a huge bunch of sharp green leaves and made a rich sorrel puree and served it with Scottie’s aged Angus prime fillet steak. Sweat the sorrel leaves (take the spines out first, they’re bitter), puree with mustard, cream, what have you. We’ve also enjoyed wild Italian arugula salad with crushed walnuts (from Mum’s garden – my walnut tree only planted last year); an amazing first crop of Feijoas from our tree only planted last year, but every day during summer I emptied the chooks’ water over it; celery-leaf soup. The rhubarb never disappoints – breakfast every morning with yoghurt and tonight I think I’ll make myself a rhubarb pie.

One of my brown bantams (Mikki or Nikki) got swiped by a hawk, so the others are very wary every time that dark shadow swoops over above them. They’re great, the banties, because they keep laying eggs all winter, they don’t leave their tutae all over the verandahs, they put themselves to bed at night and they’re easy on the gardens. I think I’ll let Pip hatch some more eggs. Plus their colours are so vivid. Pip’s white and B (the bantam rooster) is golden.

This afternoon I walked down to the boundary and picked some ripe olives from Te Hera, where they just go to waste, and have started the brining process. Kete came along, as is her habit, and this time Scaredy Kat, the newest wee thing, came too. She was dumped here at Christmas and is as crazy as Titewai Harawera on stilts, but she’s gradually getting a little less Scaredy. Soon I’ll be able to trap her in the shed when she goes in to get her feed, then take her to the vet to be spayed and inoculated. Kete hates! her and hisses if she gets too close. She looks like a little feral doesn’t she? Whereas Kete (above) is such a duchess.

You may think I’m mad, but I think I’m so blessed to live in such a beautiful valley, with only animals for company when I’m on my own.

 

Vintage Cats

Vintage hasn’t turned to vinegar after all. We picked around 35 tonnes of Pinot Noir (sold a bit more which we didn’t need) and between eight and nine tonnes of Pinot Gris. We still have the Syrah and Viognier to go; that will probably come off in the next two weeks, depending on the weather and how the bunches can hold.

It’s Anzac Day as I write this, coinciding with Easter. This morning we arose at 5am because we were helping Helen Campbell do the food and sustenance after the Dawn Service – sausage rolls, saveloys on toothpicks and, because it’s Easter, hot cross buns. Plus, of course, tea and coffee “with or without” a tot of rum.

There’s always a good turn-out in Martinborough, around 200 even though it was raining this morning. They assemble outside Pain & Kershaw, march to the Square for the service, then come over to the Town Hall for their cuppa. CCQC and Farmer He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named poured the rum.

On Friday we bottled our Viognier 2010, which is even better than the 2009 vintage – drier, but still with good fruit. More along the lines of Condrieu, which is what we’ve been aiming for. Simon Groves, who guides us with our winemaking here, and who’s an excellent winemaker in his own right, is happy with where that’s heading.

Simon and Amanda also run the Martinborough Wine Centre, where our James wines this April have been the wine of the month. Two Saturdays ago, and this Saturday, we spent the days there doing wine tastings. The wines were well received, in particular the Syrah and Viognier, and once people tasted they bought. The first Saturday we did it we sold 48 bottles in two hours. This Saturday, being Easter, there were more tire-kickers, so we sold fewer – 37 bottles. But no matter, at least all those tasters have now heard of, and are familiar with James wine. The photos didn’t turn out too well – I should have used a flash.

And then of course, there’s our hard-working cellar cat, ever present, guarding the door.

 

Vintage Hell

We’re right on vintage, the rain’s persisting down, and it looks like the grapes are going to hell in a downpour. The pinot noir and the pinot gris should be coming off this week but the heavens have opened. I’ve been out leaf plucking the viognier to try to ward off the botrytis when the sun does come out, and I don’t  think my back will ever straighten up again. Yes, all you ever hear is wine wine wine.

So here’s something lovely instead. When we went up to Havelock North in January, the real reason, apart from some rest and recreation, was to buy our Christmas presents for each other. When I’d gone there in November for the Holly Hospice house and garden tour with Helen, Di, and Vicar May, we’d visited Birdwoods Sculpture Gallery, undoubtedly the highlight of the tour, where I spotted fantastic serpentine sculptures the owners had brought out with them from Zimbabwe when they emigrated. I also saw the most glorious New Zealand sculpture, soaring bird, made from aluminium ribbons, which I yearned for. I decided I’d come back with CCQC.

We’re so lucky we both agree on art and sculpture because I’d agonised over the soaring bird. I’d wanted to buy it for him for Christmas but really wondered if he’d like it. Then when he saw it, he loved it too, and now it’s swirling above the barrels in our winery, protecting the ferment.

And his present to me? A Zimbabwean serpentine sculpture in the centre of the grasses and lavender garden in front of the house, which looks fantastic, and for which we had to have a special frame made so it doesn’t blow over and break. It’s called spiral seed pod.

 If you’re in Hawke’s Bay, drive out Middle Road, Havelock North to Birdwoods Gallery. Bruce and Louise, the owners, are so welcoming and they run a fantastic business in this converted church they dragged here from Waipawa. They don’t just sell sculptures, but really nice crockery, bowls, jewellery, furniture – everything except junk.

Meanwhile, back to grizzling about the weather.

 

Earthquake Appeal – Martinborough Generosity

It’s amazing how Martinborough people have opened their hearts, arms and most importantly, wallets for the people of Christchurch. For it’s no use simply asking, “what can we do?” The best thing for the people of this munted city is cash, cash, cash. Give until it hurts, as I wrote in my column.

Palliser Estate generously gave $10,000, as you can read in Richard Riddiford’s blog (so long as you don’t mind reading prose without punctuation – it’s sort of post-modernism).

But the village made an enormous combined effort for the Red Cross. Helen Campbell, wife of Farmer (He-Who-Must-No-Longer-Be-Named) phoned me and said she felt so sorry for all the devastated people who’d been wiped out by the quake, she’d decided to hold a mini-market in our newly refurbished and renovated St Andrews Church hall. The one we’d raised all the money for last year when we held the Home and Country Garden tour. (We’re repeating that in November, by the way, with added extras.)

Blimmin’ Hell, Helen. I said. You’re a holy terror. Yes of course I’ll help. I was put in charge of Devonshire teas. Plus I baked a multitude of cakes and cupcakes, Queen cakes and biscuits, packaged them up prettily in cellophane bags and tied them up in Canterbury colours.

Sue, from the local dairy, baked us 100 scones, so I gave her a bottle of our Redbank James Pinot Noir. Jan from Providore, and Robyn, and Lesley from aforementioned Palliser helped me with Devonshire teas.

But the hall was the big drawcard, and the sausage sizzle. The baking table was literally groaning with cakes, biscuits, meringues, what have you.

There was produce from people’s gardens:

Gorgeous flowers:

Dinny from Soeur Design displayed the clothes so it didn’t look like the local jumble sale or a dungery old church fair:

And Susie took over the children’s clothes so no one needed to feel ashamed to buy:

And here’s Helen bossing about with the raffles (Now this must go here, and that must go there…..) with John:

And here are some local ladies enjoying their Devonshire teas:

And in a morning, and a bit of the afternoon, we raised $7010.10!

Not bad for a small community.

 

Hawke’s Bay Mon Amour

Well, I love living in Wairarapa, but I was born and brought up in central Hawke’s Bay so going back there is always emotional. We went to Havelock North for three nights, staying at the beautiful Black Barn, owned and developed by creative geniuses Andy Coltart and Kim Thorp. We were in luxurious Rush Cottage, typical of the architecture you see in that area by William Rush:

Andy Coltart was the first guy who ever asked me on a date. I was about 13 or 14. It was at the polo in Hastings, I was grooming for my brothers, all red-faced, gangly, hot and sweaty, and he was drop-dead gorgeous. I got such a fright when he was staring at me (I thought he was thinking, who’s that flat-chested skinny tomboy?) then came over and asked if I wanted to go to the pictures – that I asked if I could take my girlfriend too. He said yes, and so we went to the pictures. He had to ask my mother first. Good grief! My mother, who can make ’Good Evening’ sound like a declaration of war.

I digress. The lovely thing about Rush Cottage is they haven’t gussied it up, as people with no taste would do. For instance, the bathroom sink is still the concrete laundry tub, with brass taps, and H and C etched into the wood. (Why don’t they still make concrete tubs?).

On our first night there I woke up to the sound of sobbing. It was strange. At first I didn’t identify it as sobbing; it was just a noise I couldn’t establish. I woke CCQC and asked if he could hear anything. I asked if he’d left the stereo on – no. I went back to sleep for a while but woke and could hear the same sobbing again. I went downstairs but couldn’t find anything. I’ve since found out it has something to do with William Rush, the architect, so there is history.

Anyway, I have allowed a selection of the many photos I took to describe the simple charm of this place. We had a wonderful time. Lunch at Black Barn Bistro was a delight. They’ve excavated a big area under the vines so you sit lower than the level of the trellises, and look along the rows. Above you are wooden horizontal venetian blinds supporting grapes. It’s the sort of ambience you don’t want to get up and leave, and the staff support that feeling. To hell with restaurant reviews which only rate the food (notwithstanding the delicious scallop dish we ate), Black Barn Bistro is the best restaurant in Hawke’s Bay. I’ve been twice now and it’s the only place worth visiting. Truly – for all round experience. Just bliss.

Now to photos: A window latch at Rush Cottage:

The front gate latch:

A lovely Dick Frizzell on the wall, which he told me (he’s a Facebook Friend) he painted to pay for a weekend spent there:

Black Barn palm tree kissing the sky Vine man at dusk (he looks a little melancholy?)

The kitchen bench and sink:

Garden chair soaking up the Hawke’s Bay sun:

Upstairs bedroom view down through vines to Napier

Front door of Rush Cottage with Bougainvillea

And finally, on one of those perfect drawn-out Hawke’s Bay summer evenings which I remember from my youth, we sat out and enjoyed a bottle of the finest: