This website will tell you a little about James wines, the restaurants in which you can drink James wines, stockists where you can buy James wines – or you can order from us.
Our website is also a journal, constantly updated, about our life on the vineyard, and the people involved in growing our grapes, making and selling our wine, and most importantly, drinking our wine.
Jane Cooper, winemaker at Matahiwi Winery, makes our two principal wines, Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris. Here are extracts from her tasting notes for James Pinot Noir 2006, and James Pinot Gris 2008:
Pinot Noir 2006: “Opens out on the nose. Red, dense fruits – plum, cherry, clove – savoury aspect also. Slightly charry oak. Toasty, a little licorice. Long fruit palate with dusty tannin on the finish. Leather and spice.”
Pinot Gris 2008: “Ripe and melon pears, stonefruit with a slight rose petal character. Mineral note as well as a slight sweet toffee note (I think this comes from the time on lees and also the barrel component). Intense guava and persimmon. Nice oily texture mid-palate.”
This website also serves as a journal celebrating the joys of escaping from city life and living our dream in the beautiful Te Muna valley, just out of Martinborough. To wake each morning in such a splendid environment, albeit sometimes harsh, and spend the day with our animals and vines, is indeed a treat.
We hope you will agree.
Colin Carruthers and Deborah Coddington
deb.coddington@xtra.co.nz
Photos by Andrew Gorrie, article by Keri Welham, courtesy Dominion Post
April 7, 2009 at 12:53 am
Hi Deborah – I followed the link to this blog on your email this morning. Interesting – I’ll be back. Last November I started an occasional blog of my own – ‘Musings from Martinborough’, at http://jmacg.wordpress.com. It’s less regular than yours and somewhat more eclectic. The current latest post is actually about the wine industry. I should really write something about my Piano in the Parlour talk at Wharekaka last week, but there are no photos.
I follow a couple of other rural blogs: http://www.diggersvalley.co.nz/Home.htm from Northland (really excellent photos) and http://blog.bedlamfarm.com/ in New York state.
April 29, 2009 at 12:50 am
There’s a holy trinity of Martinborough blogs!
I’m an expat American who moved to Martinborough in 2006. ‘Moon over Martinborough’ is my little blog about living a simple yet deeply satisfying life in one of the word’s most beautiful places.
http://martinborough.wordpress.com/