An Introduction to Wine

I mentioned on a previous post that I have been taking an introduction to wine course in Wellington High School for the last few weeks. What follows is a random list of things I found interesting over the eight weeks.

All wine competitions use the same standard XL5/ ISO glasses to help make the competition results more consistent. There are surprisingly small but designed to funnel the smell of the wine towards the nose.

Wine judges are not supposed to wear perfume or aftershave at a competition. Well you don't want the judge describing his or her buddies "CK One" instead of the wine!

Sometimes when you open a bottle of wine with a cork closure there will be crystals or wine diamonds on the bottom of the cork. This is due to tartaric acid and is completely harmless. It does not mean that the wine is corked.

Sometime in the 18th century American grape plants were introduced into Europe. Unknowingly there was a parasite that lived on the American grape plant roots and it was introduced also. Within a very short period of time most of the European grape plants were killed by the parasite as they were not immune to it. However the Europeans noticed that the American grapes were immune so they grafted the European grapes onto American roots. The majority of grape plants in Europe therefore have American roots!

If you open a bottle of wine and do not plan on drinking it all the best thing to do is keep a half sized empty bottle of wine in the kitchen. When you open the standard size bottle pour half the contents into the half sized bottle almost to the top and reseal. This will help keep the wine as less oxygen can get at it. Pumps and putting the lid back onto a half empty bottle of wine doesn't work!

The next trendy white wine in NZ will be Viognier and has been trendy for some time in other countries. Get it while it's still cheap here!

Contrary to popular belief Blue Nun, Black Tower and Liebfraumilch are not Rieslings but Muller Thurgau! A German came to NZ a long time ago and sold the idea of Muller Thurgau to the masses as it is the first grape to ripen. Apparently what he forgot to mention was that it makes awful wine!

Next time you see a medal on a bottle of wine remember it might not be a good thing. Some competitions are run over a week and the judges can be asked to judge 100 bottles of wine in one hour! After the first few they can't really taste the subtleties anymore so the winners are usually "in your face" kind of wines. After the competition the wineries note which one won and why and make there wines even more "in your face" than the winner for next years competition! This is obviously not necessarily a good thing for wines! A judge once said that he awarded a gold medal to a wine but when he tried the same wine a week later he couldn't drink it!

Pinot Gris is a Pinot Noir Grape that has reverted. For no apparent reason you can plant Pinot Noir and walk out one day and some of the plants will have become Pinot Gris. Not only that but they can revert back to Pinot Noir again at a later stage!

There are two types of red wine drinkers generally. Those that like red wines with red fruit berries and those who like their reds with black fruit berries. If you tend to like Pinot Noirs and Grenache then you like your red berries. If you like Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrahs then you tend to like your blackberries. Merlot and Malbec tend to fall somewhere in the middle and depending on the wine could fall into either category.

Red wine varieties ripen in the following order. Pinot Noir, Merlot, Malbec, Cabernet Franc, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot.

White wines ripen in the following order. Muller Thurgau, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewurztraminer, Chardonnay and Pinot Gris. (Can't remember where Rieslings fit in!)

Shiraz is what the Australians call Syrah.

If you want to spice up your baked beans add in the dregs from your bottle of wine apparently it makes them taste yummy!

"Clarets" is the general name given to the red wines of Bordeaux. Bordeaux is not the hottest of areas and the French have managed over the centuries to perfect the art of blending grape varieties to produce some excellent wines. The reason for this is that in any given year a specific variety might fail due to the weather. The climate is very similar to NZ and it is suggested that therefore NZ could be the New World equivalent of Bordeaux!

If you buy a wine in a shop or order one at a bar or restaurant and it has either cork or screw cap taint you should bring it back to the shop or ask for a different bottle in a restaurant. The shops and restaurants return the defective bottles to the wineries i.e. they do not suffer any loss. They estimate that around 5% of wines sealed with a cork have cork taint or as it is more commonly referred to as "corked". Corked wine is also know as TCA and you can find out a bit more about it on the link. It basically smells like wet cardboard.

The supermarkets are more or less responsible for the growing use of screw cap bottles as they decided a number of years back to charge the wineries for a 5% loss due to cork taint whether the bottles were returned or not. Some clever Aussies and Kiwi's came up with the solution of the screw cap and the Supermarkets agreed to drop the 5% on wines sealed in this fashion. No one at the time foresaw any difficulty.

There has been a lot of debate over the problems with corked wines and the salvation that screw caps have supposedly brought to the industry. I googled cork and screw cap taint and was amazed at how many contrary opinions are out there on the subject. Our teacher firmly believes that screw cap taint is a real problem especially in wines that are over a year old. He went as far as to suggest that almost 20% of screw capped wines have a problem with sulphide reduction and that no one in the wine industry was prepared to accept that there is a problem because of the obvious consequences. He also suggested that since the cork industry has become more regulated and quality control has greatly improved the number of wines with cork taint has reduced to as little as 1-2%.

We tasted a number of wines during the course, up to 14 per night, and a significant amount of screw capped wines had problems with sulphide reduction. The basic test is if there is a smell of struck matches or flint when you open the bottle and if there is a metallic astringent after taste to the wine i.e. it doesn't end subtly. I am no expert but have definitely tasted screw cap tainted wines and they are not nice.

However I did manage to find one article that I believe is quite even handed in it's consideration of the problems associated with wine taint and you can read it here and judge for yourselves. There is obviously more than two ways to seal a wine and aswell as the rubber "corks" there's the likes of the Zork!

Perhaps we just have to accept that there is no ideal solution to the problem of tainted wines and come to terms with the fact that most of us never even know we are drinking one, myself included!

Cathal

Winter in Wellington

Winter is usually the time for night classes of some description or another and when Sharon signed up for a night course in Wellington High School to learn how to sew she encouraged me to take a course too. If you click on the link above you'll see the extensive list of courses available.

Not to be outdone I decided to take an Introduction to Wine course being taught by Paul White on a Wednesday night in the same school. This week is the third week and I am planning on doing a separate blog post about what I have learned so far in the coming weeks.

We also started going to ballroom dance classes. All I can say is that I must have been really bad in a former life as I am certainly being punished now! I think it would be fair to say that most men in the class have been dragged there, kicking and screaming, by their partners. I actually did ballroom dance classes years ago and it's not like "riding a bicycle" in that you forget the moves very quickly. So far we have done the quick step, rumba, foxtrot, rock'n'roll and last but not least the waltz. It's really well run, the ratio of teachers to pupils is very impressive, although at times I feel I could do with some private lessons!

On Monday nights while Sharon's out sewing I go and play Korfball. Korfball is a dutch game and is a cross between basketball and netball. If you click on the link here you will get a better idea about the game. It's quite a unique sport in that it is a mixed team sport with four men and four women on each team. There's also clubs in Christchurch and Auckland. I took some pictures one of the nights I was there, but they were pretty crap, so here's a few I borrowed from the web site I linked to above.

So that keeps us pretty busy during the week leaving the weekend free to take in some of the other highlights of Welly, such as the many festivals, cafes, art galleries and the like. There's really no end of things to do in the capital!

Cathal

Dunedin (49) Day 4

Dunedin, located in the region known as Otago, is the South Island's second city (after Christchurch) and was founded by Scottish settlers. Dunedin being Celtic for Edinburgh. It even has a statue of Robert Burns at it's centre.

We arrived into Dunedin late after travelling down from Oamaru via the Moeraki Boulders. We found a Top 10 holiday park and set up camp, metaphorically speaking, for the next two nights. Dunedin's centre is known as the Octagon and it was there that we found the Nova Cafe and had something to eat.

The next day the plan was simple enough, have a look around Dunedin and then head to the railway station for the Taieri Gorge Railway experience. Little did I know that most of my morning would be spent tracking down wool shops listed in Sharon's "Crafty Girls Road Trip" book and most of my afternoon photographing her FO's! If you don't believe me check out her blog here.

Here's a few pics taken around Dunedin.

After traversing the city we headed down to the station for the rail experience.

Now let me quite clear about something. In the AA's 101 list, it lists the Otago Rail Experience as number 16 and from what I can understand the Taieri Gorge Railway is the first part of this trip, and I hope to God not the highlight. The Lonely Planet states the following in relation to it "some visitors rate the Taieri Gorge Railway as one of the great train journeys." Note how the author didn't say he thought it was one of the great railway experiences!!!!! Damning with faint praise if you ask me. Here's a pic of the train station and the train.

We were absolutely dumb founded for the whole trip but unfortunately it was not in a good way. Some of the highlights of the trip were, stopping to look at a statue of a dog- see pic below- and stopping on the way back-as a treat because the driver had made good time- to look at Peter's knob. Peter's knob being the earth mound that Peter used to stand on regaling the passengers with his stories about the route presumably until he too lost the will to live. A plight most of the passengers were suffering from within an hour of departure.

Not to worry though there was a bar on board and while the others were getting their picture taken with the over sized statue of a dog- hardly Michelangelo's David I might add- Sharon headed to the bar for some well earned refreshments.

Spectacular is a word often used to describe the New Zealand landscape and in most cases it is more than apt. Our driver and guide however must have had a different idea of what spectacular meant and used it to describe every blade of grass we passed on our trip. The only thing worse than the trip was having to do it all over again on the return leg, Peter's knob or no Peter's knob! Here's a pic of the dog and one of Annette whose look of total despondency speaks volumes.

We decided not to head back to the camper van site on our return and headed to the local cinema instead. We had booked a restaurant recommended by B called The Palms the night before and headed there after the cinema. We were late and not sure where we were going so we rushed most of the way and arrived a little out of breath.

To say we lowered the tone, would be putting it mildly. On our arrival the maitre'd offered to take our bags and jackets but stopped short of going out and buying us some decent clothes, only just it has to be said. It was one of the more expensive places we ate on our trip and although we enjoyed it, it was not the best food experience, but to be fair it had some stiff competition.

We awoke the next day and headed to Baldwin Street in the suburbs of Dunedin, home of the worlds steepest street. Here's a few pics.

There is a debate about whether it is actually the steepest street in the world or whether Lombard St. in San Francisco is but, with a gradient of 1:2.86, it doesn't take from the sheer madness of it.

I could say that the street made such an impression on us that we left a piece of ourselves behind when we left that day. What would be more accurate however would be to say that we left part of the camper van!

I was pulling out and decided to do a little shimmy into a side road in order to do a type of U-turn. The little voice in my head kept on suggesting that a six berth camper van was not exactly made for "shimmying" and wouldn't you know it but the little voice was right. As I was pulling out I thought I heard the sound of something smashing. Sharon got out and had a look and said that there was a load of broken glass and plastic on the ground, but the van was OK. A little confused, if somewhat relieved, I tried a simpler maneuver and drove on to our next destination, the Catlins.

It was while we were parked at a lake later that day that I noticed that the light over the door, made mostly of glass and plastic, was suspiciously missing. Suddenly Sharon's words came back into my head and also the realisation that we were not so lucky after all. On closer inspection there were a few other small dents and scrapes and one didn't have to be Sherlock Homes to deduct that our camper van had unwillingly been caressed by a telegraph pole!

Luckily we had bought out all the excess on the insurance so it was not an issue on our return. So that was our time in Dunedin, eventful if nothing else although I am not sure whether any of us would have ranked it in forty ninth place especially considering that Christchurch comes in at sixty first. Perhaps if the numbers were reversed it would have made a great deal more sense to us.

The Taieri Gorge Railway, approach with caution.

Cathal

Oamaru to Dunedin (49) via the Moeraki Boulders (72) Day 3

We left Mount Cook and headed on our next leg of our trip to Oamaru. As we had doubled back to see Lake Tekapo we were under pressure to get to Oamaru by dusk, dusk being the time that the blue or fairy penguins leave the sea to go to their rooks. We rang ahead and were advised to arrive at Oamaru's Blue Penguin Colony at 5.30 pm as the times obviously change all year round.

Sharon and I had seen fairy penguins before in Bicheno, Tasmania but had not gone to an actual centre. We arrived just in time and typically had to wait another hour before we saw any penguins. They do not allow people to take any photo's as it might upset the penguins so you will have to click on the link above to see them.

We ate that night in a place called the Last Post, and again I find the name kind of ironic, because if it was the actually the Last Post I wouldn't eat there again. Annette summed it up when she highlighted the fact that we had all been given steak knives with our chicken dishes. The word "tough" sums up the experience.

This was in marked contrast to the next restaurant we would find ourselves in the next day. After missing the turn off for the Moeraki Boulders we found ourselves in Moeraki Village, a cute little harbour village not unlike something you would experience back home in Slade near Hook.

We decided we would eat in the camper van, a decision none of us took lightly, and then head back to see the boulders. We decided to stretch the legs before eating and happened to pass by one of the local restaurant's called Fleur's Place. In a strange type of synchronicity we all looked at each other at the exact same time- as we were thinking the exact same thing- why not eat here? Here's a few pics taken from the outside.

Given the setting who wouldn't want to eat here and unlike a lot of restaurant's whose food pales in comparison to it's setting, this restaurant didn't disappoint. We went in and while being escorted up stairs there was a group of pictures of Rick Stein eating in the restaurant on the wall. If it's good enough for Rick, I thought, it's good enough for me. Here's a few more pics of the village.

We all agreed that it was the best food experience of our trip. We all had fish, well when in Rome! Here's a few more pics.

After desert and coffees we headed back to the camper van and down the road to the Moeraki Boulders. Here's a few pics of them.

The boulder's are formed, we think, from erosion of the coast as opposed to being dropped here by glaciers and the pic above of one nearly formed would seem to collaborate that theory. Here's a few more pics which give you a better idea of the size of the boulders.

We really enjoyed the boulders, and would have it higher up on the AA 101 list. Here's a few more abstract pics.

I am conscious that a lot of you might not know which direction we travelled in, so if you click here you will get a map of the south island. We basically travelled down the East Coast of the South Island and back up the West in a circuit.

After the boulders it was onto Dunedin. You can read more about the Scottish influenced city in our next post.

Cathal

Christchurch (61) Day 1

I joined Sharon and Annette in Christchurch, New Zealand's garden city, on the 10th May.

Even though we have now traveled pretty extensively around NZ, Wellington is still where we prefer to live and do not regret picking the capital as our home for the year. Having said all that, Wellington city is a modern, and in my opinion ugly city. It's not ugly because it is modern, but by the fact that who ever built the majority of the high rise buildings in the 70's didn't care about the impact the buildings would have on the city itself. I have read a book about the architecture of Wellington and it appears that a couple of Australian companies had the majority of the work and didn't care about anything except their bank balances. So when we arrived in Christchurch we were really struck by it's beauty. In places it would remind you of the likes of Cambridge in England and has, like most of NZ, strong English heritage.

Christchurch was built to a grid pattern like most modern cities but benefits greatly from the river Avon that meanders through it, and therefore it's many ornate bridges. The river and bridges help to break the grid up and make it feel less contrived. Here's a few pics along the river Avon in the heart of the city.

You can even go punting on the river Avon and you can see the mooring post in the pic above. The seasons here are late by one month if not two, so although it's technically winter, it looks like autumn with the foliage on the trees still changing colour. Here's a pic of Sharon and I on one of the many bridges.

Apart from punting on the river Avon you can catch a tourist tram that brings you around the hot spots of the city. It's a short twenty minute trip-not sure what that says about the city- and once you buy the ticket you can get on and off as often as you like for two days. You can even get the restaurant tram should you wish to chew while you view. Here's a pic of the tram. Needless to say the restaurant tram is bigger!

We took the tram down to the Art's Centre to take a look around the shops and studios. It's a great area and while we were there all the columns were temporarily covered in an art installation. Here's a few pics of some of the courtyards.

If you look closely at the "wall paper" you realise that each pattern is made up of people or parts of their body as per the pics below.

There's also some sculptures around the Art's area and the one below is suspended above one of the courtyards.

We ate lunch in Le Cafe while we were there and, as it would turn out, we would also have an evening meal there on our return to Christchurch towards the end of our trip. The food was great and all in all we had some great food experiences in Christchurch. Thanks mainly to some recommendations from B who used to live there.

While Sharon was in one of the wool shops I crossed the road to the Botanic Gardens and took some pics of kids playing in the fallen leaves from an enormous specimen of a tree.

It was getting late by the time Sharon had finished making a few purchases, so we headed back to our hotel via Cathedral Square which is the hub/ meeting place of the city. Here's a pic of the cathedral and it's most famous sculpture built to celebrate the millennium. It depicts, I think, leaves blowing in the breeze.

That evening we ate in a Spanish restaurant called Pedro's, the lamb came highly recommended and who were we to argue. It was fantastic and plenty in the one dish for two, so myself and Sharon shared. Annette had sole which she also really enjoyed. It gets great reviews here and just goes to show that a bit of local knowledge goes along way, thanks B!. After our feed we went to Dux de Lux which is a bar, micro brewery and live venue for a night cap. They even had alcoholic ginger beer on draught, although none of us imbibed.

We awoke the next morning and said goodbye to our creature comforts, it was time to head out to the airport and collect our camper van, our new home for the next two weeks. As it would turn out it was not as long as we had planned but you'll have to wait to see what happened.

Cathal

Sydney (Days 16-17)

Our penultimate day in Sydney saw us cramming as much as we could into it. First and foremost we had run out of clean clothes so we decided to go and buy some cheap T shirts.

We had passed the QVB or Queen Victoria Building a few time and actually walked though it's arcade another, and I was anxious to go back and take a proper look around, I mean do some clothes shopping!

The building was restored to it's original grandeur a few years back and has won countless awards since. It also has some nice shops, and despite the setting, they are not necessarily expensive. Here are a few pics.

I really like the old fashioned lifts. Anyway I met Sharon about an hour later, she had shopping bags, I had photos. Sharon reminded me that the purpose of going to the QVB was to buy some clothes and we therefore stopped in another shop on the way back to the hotel.

We went into a unisex clothes shop and we weren't in the door five minutes when a guy came up to me and told me that if I bought two T Shirts I got free thongs! I think I actually ran away from him. I eventually found Sharon and didn't let her out of my sight. To be fair to the guy he came up to us at the cash register and said that he must remember to call them flip flops in future! The penny finally dropped, we called them flip flops, the Kiwi's call them jandels and the Aussies call them thongs! (It's good to know these things).

After the morning shopping we had lunch in the MCA Cafe (Museum of Contemporary Art) and it was really good. It has a nice setting at the harbour and has seating outside if you come early or book. We did neither so we ate inside, but the food and service were really good, even if it did put a bit of a dent in the old wallet. After that we did a quick tour of the Museum and saw an interesting exhibition by Paddy Bedford, a very well respected Aborigine painter.

After we were fed and watered we headed down to the Opera House to go and see, or should that be hear, Brahms Symphonies No's 1 & 3. Here's a poster and a pic of the second iconic feat of engineering in Sydney harbour, the harbour bridge.

On our previous tour of the opera house our guide was at pains to tell us that photographs within the main theaters was not allowed, we duly left our camera and bags in the cloak room and proceeded to the hall.

We went inside the theatre and I was glad I didn't suffer from epilepsy as the amount of cameras flashing would surely have brought on an attack. I was raging, ignorance is bliss it would seem and I came away from the concert without a photo. Not only that, but as we booked so late, we were in the "gods" and had fantastic seats to take in the entire venue.

After the concert, which was excellent, we got a bus out to Bondi Beach, Sydney's other famous beach. We had lugged our swimming gear around with us all day and were looking forward to a nice swim on the famous beach.

It seems the gods were against us on this trip when it came to swimming as every time we had an opportunity it rained. It rained in Lake McKenzie, Bondi Beach and we were to learn later on on our trip that it would rain also in Wineglass Bay. (well not actually rain but be overcast and duller than you would like). Here's two pics of Bondi Beach. If you are Irish and home sake, my advise is go to Bondi Beach, we heard Irish accents everywhere!

After Bondi we tried to get into Bondi Icebergs, which would turn out to be posher than we would have liked and totally booked up. Because of the former we didn't really mind. The waiter recommended their sister restaurant on the other side of the beach and we strolled down to North Bondi Italian Food. You couldn't book, so we had a 45 minute wait, and unfortunately it wasn't worth it.

That night, as we were strolling around, we saw the following poster and it reminded us of Fiona - we wondered if this was the secret reason for Fiona's love of Mojito's - did they offer a similar service in Buenos Aires? Sharon wonders if it's something we could introduce in Ireland?

That was our second last day, we got up on Day 17 and checked out of our hotel, and waited to be brought to Sydney Airport, next stop, Hobart, Tasmania.

I have a head cold at the moment and the mood is therefore a little sedated. I am also getting a little tired of blogging about Australia considering we are back a month. (Hence four posts in one day!). So if our trip to Sydney doesn't sound as up beat as it should perhaps that's the reason.

We love city holidays, and tend to go on them more than sun holidays. We went to Valencia in Spain for our first wedding anniversary last year and it was really fabulous, but I suspect that if we had done it immediately after Queensland it too couldn't match the shear "newness" of every experience we had up North.

It's unfortunate, but as an adult, you loose your child like innocence and things have a bad habit of becoming habitual, banal. With Queensland, there's no such fear. In terms of excitement it was like stepping back in time.

Cathal