The day started real early and building a fire in the rain is quite depressing… However, the rain cleared up, the fire burnt nicely, the pots went onto the fire on schedule (sort of) and the people arrived en masse. Got the heating right in the winery and having limited the numbers to 120, it wasn’t as crowded as last time.

Made krummelpap (crumbed maize porridge – the African version of couscous) this time and a couple of pots of rice (emergency fall-back). A beef potjie (poi-key) and a chicken potjie as the main course and apple pie to finish off with (for those interested in matching the wines, imagine Pinot Noir, Riesling and Pinot Gris). Haven’t had any complaints nor any reports of medical emergencies so I assume all went down well. Amazed at the popularity of the krummelpap – I was nervous that being a foreign and uncommon dish (outside of Africa), uptake might have been slow. I was wrong!

Nicholas and friends performed a truly spirited rendition of African jazz and being inside an insulated but metal clad building made for very interesting accoustics! However, a fair amount of clapping and later on dancing indicated that the tunes and the rythms have an universal appeal.

The auction provided some laughs and some good natured banter and ultimately did what it was meant to do – raise money for the rescue helicopter.

We had fantastic volunteers that came to help with preparations, on the day and with the clean-up afterwards. Thanks!

And then of course each and everyone that turned up, opened their pockets and supported the Canterbury West Coast Air Rescue Trust – THANK YOU!

Great article and debate on the pricing of wine if you click here. Raises quite a few questions and the answers aren’t always that easy or clear. Ultimately, enjoying wine is a very personal, subjective and emotive issue. How to calculate the value of “I like this” versus “I like this a lot”? Unfortunately, too often it may be a case of “they like this therefore I should like it too” or worse: “it is expensive therefore I should like it a lot…”

And the Sandihurst True & Daring Riesling 2007 is one of them!

Out of 46 wine producing countries and over 10,000 wines entered, this is just about the most amazing thing that has happened with us here at Sandihurst. Are we excited? You bet!

The awards dinner is in London in September and you can read about it and book your tickets by clicking here. You can also go and look at the list of Trophy winners by clicking here.

Below is an extract from the IWC’s press release:

“The world’s most prestigious and influential independent wine competition, the International Wine Challenge (IWC), has unveiled the results of the 2010 Trophy and Great Value Wine Awards today at the Lords Nursery Pavilion. 111 wines were awarded a Trophy this year, along with 14 Great Value Wines judged for their style, availability and price.

France had the honour of coming first for the second year running, with 21 wines being awarded a Trophy, in second place Australia (12), closely followed by Portugal (11). Meanwhile Germany, Italy and New Zealand were each awarded 8. Also Japan’s Sake category achieved an impressive 14 Trophies.

The Trophy stage is the final round for these award-winning wines. Having already achieved a Gold medal through the Challenge’s rigorous judging process, the wines are tasted once more by an elite panel of judges against others in the same category, to determine if they are worthy of a Trophy in addition to their Gold medal.”

There are a few pictures of last year’s event on the Gallery page (click here). Come and join us and let’s have fun while supporting the Air Rescue Trust. See you on Sunday!

First turn on your sound.

Talking about export and strategy and target markets, our son Sean commented: “You should go where Matt goes”. So who the heck is Matt? He doesn’t tell us, he shows us. And it is not “Who the heck is Matt”? It is “Where the hell is Matt?”

Brilliant! Hope you enjoy too!

Can you taste that?!

That is the summary we received from the judges’ notes at the International Wine Challenge 2010. Their description of our  Sandihurst True & Daring Riesling 2007 which they awarded a Gold medal.

I love it (the description and the wine). This is one blog post that doesn’t get a picture – the words say it all…

What we’ve done is to make the winning wine available through our “Buy Wine Online” page for purchase by our New Zealand consumers.  This label has been allocated for our USA market but if you’re quick, you may be able to get your 6 bottles of our current star.

Enjoy!

You have to be mad (or mad about your job) to be plunging Pinot Noir very late on a Friday night. I’ve posted a few pictures on the Gallery pages (Winery and Vineyard album) showing mad people on a Friday night…

Wine Diamonds:
Have you ever come across crystals around the cork or at the bottom of the bottle when you open a bottle of wine? Were you worried that this meant the wine was flawed or ruined?

Don’t fear! This is commonly referred to as “wine diamonds” or more correctly, tartaric crystals. Finding wine diamonds is an indicator that the winemaker fermented the wine slowly and with great care , following traditional and natural wine making principles. These crystals are neither harmful nor are they a sign of poor quality – in fact, just the opposite!

Scientifically, wine diamonds occor because grapes naturally contain tartaric acid. Grapes also contain potassium and calcium ions which form salts with the organic acids. These salts can precipitate out of the wine to form a material called potassium (calcium) bitartrate or what is referred to as “wine diamonds”.

Very often  (especially in New World wine producing countries), wines undergo a process called “cold stabilisation” where the wine gets chilled down to very low temperatures for a period of time before bottling so that the crystals can ‘fall out’ in order to make the wine ‘look good’. But here’s the catch: cold stabilization has an  influence on a wine’s balance and taste.  The rapid cooling changes the wine’s structure and as a top winemaker describes it: “Cold stabilization is like tossing out the baby with the bathwater. Perhaps you are left with an aesthetically flawless wine, but you are also left with a lesser wine.”

Hans Gsellmann, head winemaker of the famous Gsellmann & Gsellmann winery in Austria, explains it this way: “It’s a natural process a wine will go through on its path to the peak of its development. When you see these flakes at the bottom of the bottle or on the cork, you can be almost certain that you are opening the wine at the right time. You should consider yourself lucky.”

Wine aficionados in the Old World are known to seek out the bottles with wine stones as a sign of quality: it shows that the wine has not been robbed of its structure through unnatural chilling, and it is a sign of a well matured wine.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stephan_Schindler

Stephan Schindler is a wine importer living in Los Angeles. You can read more of his wine writing at  http://www.winemonger.com.
Additional information sourced from: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bruno_Cantieni (Bruno Cantieni is an Independent Wine Consultant)