Mouth Watering Watershed

May 29th, 2010 | Posted by Celia

Crisp Pork Belly with pineapple salsa  matched with the 2007 True & Daring Riesling  ( Gold medal winner at the 2010 International Wine Challenge).
Perfectly cooked Venison with beetroot puree matched with  the Sandihurst 2007 Central Otago Pinot Noir (Gold medal winner at the 2009 International Wine Challenge). 

Enough to get your mouth watering? These two dishes, created by head chef Graeme Fife from The Watershed in Ferrymead, were enjoyed by 24 diners at their monthly wine night last Thursday.

It was a brilliant evening where a total of five Sandihurst wines were tasted. The other three wines tasted were our 2008 Waipara Pinot Gris, 2008 Waipara Riesling and 2006 Chardonnay. We asked the members of the wine group to give us their food matches for these three wines – with some interesting results! With the help of Watershed Chef Graeme and Watershed owner Jo, we picked three winners who each received a bottle of wine according to their winning suggestions. Here they are:

2008 Waipara Riesling – Lisa suggested for dessert - baked apples stuffed with dried fruit and spices
2008 Waipara Pinot Gris – Sue suggetsed - Whitestone blue cheese with fresh sliced pear, apple or fig
2006 Waipara Chardonnay  - Adrienne suggested – drink slowly! with hot smoked salmon, kumara mash with crisp long beans or crisp asparagus spears surrounded by a subtle lemon sauce.

We will certainly try those suggestions and suggest you do too.

Graeme has been kind enough to share the Pork Belly recipe with us and we will include it in one of the next blog posts – it really was a winner! Thanks Graeme and Jo! And of course everybody who came!