Second wine: 2009 syrah & pinot to be bottled soon

March 3, 2010

Stunning, that’s what Nicholas said. The winemaker, that is, about our first syrah. Quite made my day, I can tell you. I tasted a barrel sample today, and I have to say I thought it was pretty good — though naturally I’m biased. The pinot’s not bad either: a lot more colour and complexity than [...]

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Christmas, wishes

December 26, 2009

Boxing Day, and hangdog shame strikes. No updates to On The Farm since April. Plenty of effort at the other place, but naught here since the pinot harvest (which went well, thanks to help from friends). We have a barrel of pinot and a half barrel of syrah to bottle in a couple of months [...]

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King harvest (has surely come)

April 5, 2009

Pinot harvested today, thanks to the good offices of friends, family, an Italian student winemaker and an itinerant American drummer. Two big barrels full, so we should do better than last year, but I’ll know the numbers in a day or so when the grapes have been crushed. Meanwhile, the syrah sits in the vines, [...]

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Time of the season

March 26, 2009

I ride the farm bike (four wheels, a buggered exhaust so it roars rather than purrs) round the vineyard several times a day at the moment, in the hope that this will deter voracious avian thieves from feasting on my crop. Last year, they reduced a tonne to 300kg, but this year (fingers duly crossed) [...]

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Guilt, and Google

January 18, 2009

The guilt part is that the other place has been taking up all my blogging, and OTF has suffered. So here’s a quick update, stimulated by yesterday’s gadget acquisition. I was fiddling around in Google Maps, and there — lo and behold — it appears that Google’s Street View is already available for Ram Paddock [...]

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First wine: The Faultline Pinot Noir in the barrel

October 12, 2008

Friday was a big day. I took some friends of ours up to the Daniel Schuster winery (well worth a visit by anyone passing through Waipara), and we were able to taste a barrel sample of Limestone Hills’ first wine (thanks Tom and Marie). A big moment. Nervous, moi? A little, perhaps, so don’t expect [...]

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More than I can eat…

October 12, 2008

I promised a final tally for our truffle season. It’s taken me far too long to post, but I can report that we produced 228g this year, off just one tree. If we could match that yield across the whole truffiere, we’d be doing rather well… We didn’t sell any, but a couple of guests [...]

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Tasmanian times

September 16, 2008

I’ve just received copies of the issue of Food & Wine that includes my article about Tasmania. Looks good on the page, I have to say. I could do with a few more gigs like that, but my waistline might disagree. Web version of the article is here. Meanwhile, on the farm, I’m struggling to [...]

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Truffle media roundup

August 30, 2008

It’s been a warm, wet summer in Britain and that’s brought another bumper crop of summer truffles. Back at the beginning of the month The Guardian consulted Truffles UK boss Nigel Haddon-Paton: “It’s a really exciting year,” said Haddon-Paton. “Like most crops, truffles need water and warmth and that’s what we’ve had this summer. There [...]

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(If paradise is) half as nice

June 26, 2008

One down, one to go. The southern hemisphere’s first successful commercial grower of bianchetto (Tuber borchii) truffles, Jeff Weston* of the Borchii Park truffiere outside Christchurch, was kind enough to send me a couple of lovely truffles (see last post), and this evening we ate the first of them. It was a simple risotto milanese, [...]

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