The beauty of Riesling…
March 9th, 2010
Dirk Richter of Weingut Max Ferd Richterin the Mosel talks to Austin Beeman about what makes Riesling so special. He makes some great points. A few years ago now, when I was working in Germany, I met Richter at his winery and he was kind enough to show me around, taste through all his wines and put up with my endless questioning. The wines were so beautifully balanced. Very knowledgeable and extremely passionate about German wine, the Mosel and Riesling. I found him very ...
Nearly 20 years of Sandihurst wine here, starting with the first vintage back in 1992. The label has come a long way with Hennie & Celia taking over from the Broughs after the third bottle and dropping the woodcut look. Interestingly I dont think that third bottle featured a vintage date on the front label, it must have been on the back. The bottles are also interesting, Im not sure that lighter green ... 
Thursday April 29, 2010
Venue: Design Exchange, 234 Bay Street, Toronto
Trade Fair: 2:30pm – 5:30pm
Public Fair: 7:00pm – 9:30pm
Consumer Ticket cost: $60.00
Discover the fabulous array of New Zealand wines, including SANDIHURST, now available for the Ontario market and enjoy your wine experience with a sampling of fine food and cheese.
The Sandihurst wines are our SAUVIGNON BLANC 2008, RIESLING 2007, and PINOT NOIR 2007
Click here to purchase tickets
Click here for a pdf showing ... 
Ive just been reading a post over on BevLaw.com about ingredient labelling for wine. Given the increase in labelling requirements in the past few years this would seem to be a certainty at some stage in the future. It would be interesting to get some reader feedback/comment on this. Most other food and drink related products are required to have it so why should wine be exempt. This might really place the ... 
Another task in the vineyard at this time of year is to remove all the SECOND SET fruit. Basically the vine in its natural vigorous state is prone to producing additonal bunches of fruit at a later stage than the orignial time of fruit-set. Being later they therefore do not ripen to the same extent. At harvest time they will be underripe with low sugar levels and too high ... 
A scene from the city of Talca in Chile, where Pablo Molinos, a good friend of mine and fellow winemaker, lives. It took me quite a while to find out that he and his family were OK which was a little worrying. But such is the age of technology that despite the city having no lights or running water at the moment he somehow still managed to post a message on his Facebook page! ... 
Recent historical evidence suggests that the viticultural practice of leaf plucking (in order to enhance fruit exposure) may have originated in Italian orchards towards the end of the 15th century. However, despite images such as the above Titian painting, the practice of harvesting naked and of sending small children up the trees to reach the hard-to-get-at fruit is a theory that has now largely been discredited. 
Soon to be released, our 2009 white wines. The Sandihurst Waipara Riesling is a wine in similar style to 2008 wine, a low alcohol wine with balanced moderate sweetness and vibrant acidity, and the Sandihurst Waipara Pinot Gris, is a dry full flavoured wine with the accent on texture. Both of these wines are the first releases from my own vineyard which makes it doubly exciting.
In addition, in response to the exeptional quality of the vintage and ... 
A new breed of Riesling, an emerging trend over the last few years here in New Zealand. Lower levels of alcohol (10.5%), bags of flavour and beautiful balance.
And here is ours....Sandihurst Waipara Riesling 2008
For you wine geeks out there, the fruit for this wine is from Waipara, the major contender for NZ's vacant Riesling-capital crown. Picked around 20-21 Brix, lightly pressed and only briefly settled (as to retain a high level ... 
A native of Christchurch, and a curious wanderer of distant shores, Kirk’s talent for beautiful wines can, at least in part, be attributed to his dark decade in chartered accountancy. There, amongst the spreadsheets, columns and rows, Kirk is said to have developed the finely-tuned attention to detail he was later to apply to Sandihurst’s advantage.
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