Here’s a date to put in your diary – Saturday 27th March 2010. For my sins, I have been roped in to a group which is organising a Town & Country Home & Garden Tour on that date next year to raise funds for the reburbishment of the Martinborough St Andrews Anglican Church hall. It is a beautiful old hall, already used by the community for many worthwhile causes and groups, but badly in need of upgrading. Helen Campbell, a neighbour along Te Muna Road who has boundless energy, asked me to go on the “committee”. Actually, she twisted my arm up my back until I said yes, if you don’t call it a committee, if you call it a group who get together over wine to chat. And if there are no men on it, because men just want to talkee, they don’t want to doee. Well, we do have a man, but he’s the treasurer.

We have secured seven of Martinborough’s most exclusive, fabulous private homes which will be open to the public just the once, on this day, for a tour. Tickets, at $65 each, will be limited of course, and will include a gourmet lunch which Providore in Martinborough have so kindly offered to do, and will be either in a vineyard (drumroll please – which will be Redbank Estate. Yes that’s right, here among our vines), or in one of two lovely parklike garden settings, with live music, and Martinborough wines for sale by the glass.

Honestly, the houses we have (and I can’t reveal the owners’ names at this stage but I can promise you many of them are prominent New Zealand identities) are breathtakingly beautiful. And all of them are just wonderful – from the award-winning architecturally designed (two by Chris Kelly, who worked with the great Renzo Piano) to the lovingly maintained properties of Martinborough’s founding families.

Here’s a sneak peek at one property we’ve photographed for the advertising flyer which will go out in the next couple of weeks:

In addition, the church, which is 150 years old and extremely lovely, will be decorated as for weddings. This will be a neat day, and I’m sure the tickets will be in demand quickly when they go on sale late this month. If you want to reserve some (a great stocking stuffer) get in touch with Helen at temuna@xtra.co.nz.

And thanks, of course, to our sponsors, Brackenridge Country Retreat & Spa, Property Brokers Ltd, Pain & Kershaw Ltd, and Julicher Estate.

When I was a little girl growing up in Waipukurau I always wanted to be a journalist. There was another person in Waipukurau who was a journalist, Karl du Fresne, who went on to become editor of the Dominion. I won’t say he was a mentor, because that’s a stupid word, nobody was my mentor. But I will say that it was comforting growing up as the daughter of a farmer, where most young gels my age grew up to be wives of farmers, that there was someone I knew of who was a real, live journalist. Karl now lives not far from here, in Masterton, writes as a freeland journalist and writes a blog – http://www.karldufresne.blogspot.com

Last night I went to the launch of his new book, “The New Zealand Wine-Lover’s Companion, An A-to-Z Guide”. It is a beautifully produced little manual, published by one of this country’s most prestigious independent publishers, Craig Potton Publishing. The wraparound jacket is matt black with a printed gloss label which resembles a very finely designed wine label. Class, all class. The ISBN is 978-1-877517-12-9

Karl describes this book as “the sort of book I would have liked when I started taking an interest in wine. I found then that many of the books written about wine assumed that the reader already had a certain level of knowledge. They were often written in a language that newcomers to wine may have found puzzling, perhaps even intimidating, and they tended to bombard the reader with more technical detail than the casual wine enthusiast really needed. So with this book, I set out to fill what I perceived as a gap in the market.”

Quite. I find, even though I know a fair bit about wine, there are still those who like to write, and speak, about wine in a “I am considerably more knowledgeable about wine than thou” tone of pen or voice. Well, they are just tossers. They are like contemporary art experts. They are insecure and they are terrified about being questioned because they will be exposed as frauds, really not knowing as much as they think they know.

This book of Karl’s is a treasure. It is both informative and amusing and the perfect (I hate this phrase but it is very apt) stocking stuffer. I think it retails for about $30. Although I bought a copy, The Silver Fox was there, we were having a good time, and memory does not serve me well. This is not a book for wine snobs (then again, maybe it might take them down a peg or two, featuring as it does, a comic entry for cresta dore [I can't do an acute over the e on this blog] an old classic New Zealand wine about which English wine writer Christopher Fielden pronounced after tasting, “if  it smells of nothing and tastes of nothing it must be Cresta Dore”) but one for everyone - even beer drinkers – to enjoy. Cheers, Karl. 

Meanwhile, as I write this I look out with considerable pleasure at my garden which, despite the southerly today, has been progressing nicely. CCQC bought me a very smart lawnmower last weekend which went for a day before it died and has been sent back to the shop, but here are some photos of the garden, including the first roses to bloom:

See those hills? Those are Nga Waka a Kupe , the canoes of Kupe, and Meridian Energy, a taxpayer-owned electricity company, wants to put a windfarm up there with 45 turbines, each twice as high as the Auckland Harbour Bridge with blades twice the diameter of the Westpac Stadium. You can read about it this Sunday in my column in the Herald on Sunday.

Last Sunday we had lunch with our friends the McCallums – Dawn and Neil who founded Dry River and built it into the most amazingly successful company. Neil is one of the greatest wine makers I’ve ever met, I think, and he’s also very funny. Great company. Dawn’s a marriage celebrant and one of my biking mates – The Pinot Pedallers. One of the interesting things Neil said – and his knowledge is astounding – was that about three years ago he wrote an article predicting New Zealand would get into the mess it is in now with sauvignon blanc, especially in Marlborough. Now he predicts we will soon be in a similiar mess with pinot noir, particularly also in Marlborough and Central Otago. New Zealanders, unfortunately, are such band-wagon jumpers.

Which is why we are pleased we have stuck to our guns and our gut instincts, and stayed with just one primary label, (that is, have not pushed cheaper wine out there under a secondary label) kept our tonnage down (ie bunch-dropped), kept the quality high, and not sacrified quality for quantity. Despite the urgings of those who think they know best, we have not rushed out and found “a distributor”, but carried on quietly selling our wine by word of mouth, and it is solidly selling. There is nothing worse than a distributor mucking up and selling cheap, because you’ll never get the price back up again.

Anyway, all this preamble brings me to our other diversification – the Syrah, from the hot Rhone corner of the vineyard. The 2008 Syrah, which Martinborough’s other master winemaker, Larry McKenna helped us make (and I’d have to say, he’s also the best winemaker I’ve ever met – but let’s face it, I know so little about making wine I’m easy to impress), has now been in the barrels for 18 months. So last Saturday we began racking it off to aerate it a little and freshen it up. We saved some to drink and it is drinking just lovely. Quite full on the mouth when you first take it in, but holding its flavour well all the way down. A good hearty syrah, I’d say, which will mature very well. We left it in two tanks for a couple of days then pumped it back into the barrels, and it will go into bottles, barely (if at all) filtered, very soon. This is very exciting – we have six barrels of this to be released, probably in about late 2010, 2011.What a lovely colour!

It’s been a wee while between blogs. Life gets busy enough at this time of the year without my going and making it busier. I decided I missed journalism too much, so I’m back writing features, as well as my weekly column, for the Herald on Sunday. The first one will – all going according to plan – be published this coming Sunday, but I do get very nervous and stressed when I step back into feature writing again, and wonder why. I’m always sure I’ll be exposed as a fraud.

Meanwhile, I feel the urge to give this Hawke’s Bay company a really good plug for the quality of both their product, and their service – Gourmet Direct. You order on line, or by telephone, and your order is delivered to your door. They’ll often phone to check all is okay. It’s personal, friendly and very satisfying.

I buy most of my meat from Kate (who owns and runs the show) and I can assure you the quality is truly superb. No, it’s not the cheapest meat on the market, but there’s no waste, and I believe if you pay a little more you think carefully about how you prepare it, and you won’t eat it every night. So that’s better for your health.

About two months ago, I bought on special a tenderloin (eye) fillet. It was vacuum-packed, and nearing the end of its three-month aging when I bought it. I think it cost me about $110 and weighed about 2.5kg. I wanted it for a dinner party for 10 people, but that wasn’t happening for another three or four weeks, and I didn’t want to freeze it so I phoned Kate and discussed it with her. She asked if I had a beer fridge, or similar (yes, in the winery) and advised me to put it in there where the door isn’t being opened and shut all the time. I did that, and turned it down to really cold. Then on the night in question I cooked it the Stephanie Alexander way:

Two hours before dinner remove meat from fridge. An hour and a half before dinner heat oven to 220C. One hour before dinner put meat in oven and cook for 20 minutes for rare (which I did) or 30 minutes for medium. Remove meat, roll in a double sheeet of silver foil and keep warm in warming drawer.

What could be easier than that? It was absolutely divine. When I brought it to the table, one of the guests, Farmer Stu, who used to breed Angus cattle, said “I hope that’s Angus”.

“Of course it is,” I replied.

“How do you know?” he retorted.

“Because it was on the packaging. Pure Angus Prime. I only buy my beef from Gourmet Direct.”

Well, after he’d finished his meal he said it was the best beef he’d ever eaten and he would dream about it for the rest of his life. You can’t get better praise than that for beef.

By the way, there was enough left over to feed the QC and I for two more nights.

I have never had any second rate product from Gourmet Direct. I don’t buy pork from them, because we grow our own, but I do buy venison and it’s top quality. I buy lamb and it’s terrific. I have bought pheasant for a treat, and I bought a packet of 25 frozen, prebake croissants which you defrost overnight then next morning bake for breakfast and everyone thinks are homemade. They have all sorts of deli goods – in fact an order form to drool over. Don’t take my word for it, get on line at www.gourmetdirect.com.

They have a wide range of poultry goods, fantastic sausages, and I have bought delicious duck, but I guess I won’t be able to face eating duck for a while because our little family is out and about now:

One duckling is all we have left. He or she was one week old yesterday, and he or she has been named Star. The second one died on the third night, and Star would have departed this mortal coil also if I hadn’t realised that Pip was treating them like baby bantams, not ducklings. Blimmin’ teenage mothers! This last remaining duckling was looking very sickly, falling down, eyes rolling back, so I brought him inside and squirted some water down his throat with a syringe, put some water in the kitchen sink and dumped him in it (I’m presuming it’s a male). Well, that revived him! He paddled around, dunked his little beak in, shook his head, stopped his plaintive peeping, and perked up immediately.

I let him get thoroughly drenched then took him back out to Pip to be warmed under her feathers again (she just sits on him all the time). Then I whipped into PG Wrightsons and bought a huge bag of chick starter meal and force-fed him some of that until he got the hang of eating. Now he’s thriving.

Meanwhile, it’s back to the serious business of running the vineyard. Budburst is well and truly upon us. As you look out across the vines, you can see the haze of green as the leaves start to colour up and so far we’ve had no major frosts but that doesn’t mean we’ll escape. Snow’s forecast for tomorrow on the Rimutaka Ranges. Today the wind is fair whipping across the property; CCQC’s out on the tractor mowing that spring grass and I’m feeling pretty satisfied with some of my winter planting, like these examples of the 500 daffodil bulbs I put in.

And before we went abroad we planted our orchard which is now blooming. Apple blossom is my favourite, quite delicately pink at the same time the pale green leaves appear

and this is the crabapple blossom

In between the pavers this sweetie bravely flowers

And of course there’s no show without my three devoted companionsAnyone would think they were deliberately colour coordinated. Imagine how crazy this is going to look when I have following me one dog, one cat, one bantam rooster, one bantam hen, and one Peking duck.

One baby duckling died. Sad, but not as bad as I expected. On Saturday Pip became more and more moribund as the day wore on. We could tell she was trying to coax the ducklings out of the kennel, so we built a little ramp so they’d be able to get in and out, and I noticed she was very quiet when we were working around her. Too quiet. When I picked her up and examined her, she’d lost a huge patch of feathers from her breast. Then I examined my hands – mites all over me! Mites look like moving pinpricks on your hands and once you spot them, you start scratching all over. Luckily I still had some mite powder from Smitty’s ‘ride from hell’ down in the horse truck from Auckland, so Colin gave her a good dusting and we put her back with the ducklings. But a few hours later she was still not good. I noticed her drinking copious amounts of water and breathing really heavily, then not long before it was dark she’d gathered the ducklings under her and gone  to sleep with her face slumped down in her food. I didn’t think she’d live through the night, and worried how I’d raise three baby ducklings.

But, next morning she was perky as ever, but with only two live ducklings. One was pushed out into the cold, and dead. Maybe she did this on purpose. Maybe she calculated that one duckling had to be sacrificed to save herself and the two other ducklings, otherwise they would all perish. Animals do this. We were so delighted to see our beautiful Pip alive and well we got her out of that kennel into the sunshine and on to the grass. She loved that, and relished being free again after patiently sitting on those eggs for four long weeks. Now she’s in a new run, with a wooden wine box for a house, covered and protected by Smitty’s winter cover, and really mothering her two ducklings.

Meanwhile, I trekked up to see the two equine members who are shedding their winter coats, and Smitty as usual looks like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. His old coat gets a bit tangled but I don’t comb it off because it offers some warmth as we creep into spring, and yet the weather is too hot for him to wear his heavy winter cover (and, being the gentleman he is, he’s loaned it to Pip).

The horses are as fat as butter, up there in Farmer John’s hill paddock, all 110 acres of it, because the clover’s growing faster than Smitty, Lily or the ewes and lambs can eat it. Most of Farmer John’s lambs are Dorset Down cross, hence the smudgy-black markings. Note how big this lamb is, and it hasn’t even been weaned yet. You hear so-called gourmet “experts’ moaning about how New Zealand lamb is not really lamb because it’s too big to be lamb. Well, what would they have us do? Rip lambs from their mothers’ breasts and send them to slaughter?

I love the way the ewes and lambs watch Taja and me so suspiciously as we walk up over the brow of the hill:

Then scarper when we get too close for comfort.

As if dear old Taja would hurt them anyway. I can trust her with anything – I bet she’d pick up one of the ducklings in her gentle mouth without harming it.

And here’s the new baby:

Born today, in a cold easterly, to Pip and Squeak (not their real names), triplets!

Mother and babies doing well, thanks to midwives DC and Taja (who is so curious but thankfully well past her duck-retrieving days). Kete refusing to have anything to do with this baby-producing nonsense and asleep in her basket. Squeak (not his real name) fluffing around the perimeters, squawking about how a man can’t get a decent cigar out in the country. Gone off to skite to Winston (hasn’t actually seen what his offspring look like yet). Phoned the QC who tried his best to sound excited, but I suspect didn’t really think it was important enough to hold up the nation’s judicial affairs and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “cluck, cluck”. 

I’d just about given up on those eggs. I thought they were infertile and this morning I heard Kete yowling. Thinking she might just have nabbed a newly hatched duckling I thought I’d better check. She actually had a half-drowned fieldmouse, which I let her keep, and when I went to check on Pip, there she was, the proud mother of one fluffly, yellow, peeping duckling. So cute.

About two hours later I could hear more peeping so I lifted Pip up and she went berserk, and the third one was still pecking its way out of the shell, so I’ve left them to it. I shall take photos as soon as I can get her off her little darlings without her flying into a post-natal rage.

Any suggestions for names? And not Huey, Dewey and Louie. Maybe Snap, Crackle and Pop?

Pip and Squeak (not their real names) are reproducing. Pip went clucky and because I’d been taking all her eggs, she was sitting on air. Then my friend Jacquie gave me some ducks’ eggs – three – so now Pip is patiently trying to hatch out three Peking ducklings.

Which has left Squeak very lonely. At first he tried to single out one of the hens but Winston didn’t like that at all. There was no way he was going to give up one of his harem to a mere – ahem – pip squeak bantam rooster like Squeak (which of course isn’t his real name at all anyway) and they had some massive fights. Actually, Winston came off second best even though he is bigger. For all his preening and showing off, the bantam rooster is tougher. It was fascinating watching them fight. CCQC couldn’t stand it one morning when we woke up, and streaked across the front lawn, stark naked, bare-footed, trying to break them up, (sorry – the photo was all blurry) but all he achieved was two feet full of thistles which I had to dig out.

Anyway, they soon grew tired of fighting, and when even the chooks repelled Squeak’s advances, he took to hanging around Taja and because she is the most patient, the kindest dog in the world, she tolerates him. Mind you, I overheard her telling him the relationship is strictly platonic. In the morning, we see Squeak accompanying Taja on her rounds, then he sits out front with her, waiting for me to feed her.

He hangs around while she’s eating, eyeing those cat biscuits (yes, it’s a treat for the old dog to have cat chow for brekky), hoping she won’t notice if he pokes his beak in and sneaks a few.

But her tolerance definitely does not extend to sharing her breakfast, and despite the fact she’s 16 years old, she still knows how to scare a bantam rooster away from her dinner bowl.

I just can’t wait to see Squeak’s ego deflate when three ducklings are waddling along behind him calling out “Dad! Dad! Dad!”

I’ve always loved the flinty taste of Chablis wines which, though made from chardonnay grape, you can not replicate anywhere else in the world because of the special chalky terroir which only occurs in this part of Burgundy. Although, as our guide at Domaine Laroche told us, these deposits do surface for a very small area in England. How boring it would be if they were everywhere.

Chablis is a very pretty town, with leaning walls which you’d never get away with building here -

and lovely colours -

We were taken to Domaine Laroche for a tasting and tour of the cellar. They also have an amazing old wooden pressoir, made totally of three oak trees, transported there by hand centuries ago by monks (as this was started by monks and used to be a monastery). It was difficult to get photos of this incredible wine press which is still used once a year by Domaine Laroche, as a kind of party piece, but I took several snaps to give a general idea of how it works. Even the screw part is wooden.

The show-winery is beautifully laid out with antique picking baskets, barrels, and such.

On our drive back to the barge, James took Colin and me to one of Domaine Laroche’s grand cru vineyards as we were interested in their viticulture. No birds! No birds! How lucky they are.

See how old the vines are, from the thickness of these trunks. I guess they were about six weeks off vintage when we were there, and it was already very hot, some days it was 47.8C!

We loved this visit. It’s great to see other styles of viticulture, and I wish we didn’t have a bird problem in New Zealand. It was so amusing also to learn that the French government dictates the start date for picking grapes, and before that date no one must begin picking! I can’t imagine New Zealand growers taking any notice of that, but that’s the condition of having appellations in France.

And for dinner that night? We began with baked goats cheese en croute with red onion jam, wrapped in jambon, followed by fillet of beef with glazed shallots and spicey couscous. The cheeses were:

St Maure de Touraine, a soft, nutty and slightly salty goats’ cheese from the Loire, rolled in black wood ash, with a straw in the centre which if cut brings bad luck.

Morbier, from the Franche-Conte, a mild and buttery cows’ milk cheese with a pungent, yeasty aroma, containing a thin layer of ash in the middle separating the morning milking from the evening milking.

Reblochon, known as the tax evasion cheese as it is made using the second milking which used to take place after the tax inspector had measured the milk quota for the day, a soft cheese from the Savoie with a mild fruity taste.

And then, of course, in the French way, the desert, which was lemon and blueberry tart.

The wines were Chablis 1er Cru ‘Les Beauroys’, from the 1er Cru vineyard of Les Beauroys, where the grapes are harvested first so that the wine doesn’t get too heavy, it’s naturally the least acidic of the 1er crus. And Crozes Hermitage, a large appellation which covers almost 2500 acres, across 11 villages. It has a smoky flavour and is predominately made using the Syrah grape, but can be blended with Grenache and Cinsault. It is a powerful, tannic red, peppery with raspberries and blackberries on the finish.

The next day, it was up on deck again, hard at work relaxing.