Ive been doing some lab trials for our 2010 white wines (Riesling and Pinot Gris) to determine the level of Bentonite that will be required in order to make the wines protein stable. Its a fairly essential step as a wine that is not protein stable and stored too warm, can throw a fairly unslightly haze in the bottle that would ...

Always great when you come across something quite refreshing. Heres a snippet from the recent winedirect newsletter about one of their recent Rhone arrivals. They love the wine but its good to see them telling it like it is because we all know the wine industry has its fair share of precious souls....     

Domaine Roger Sabon is a relatively new agency for

I don't know what this really says about New Zealand as a country or the people who live here but this is a classic scene you certainly wouldnt find in too many other countries around the world. Its a booth selling free-range eggs at the farm gate on the roadside of the main road through the Waitaki Valley. The booth is unmanned but has an honesty box for you to place ...

Just back from a weeks holiday in an amazing place. After 50, mostly unsealed, kilometers off the Farlie-Tekapo road you come to Black Forest on the shores of Lake Benmore. Isolated and unspoilt, the sole farm here has built a couple of top class holiday houses, or bachs as we like to call them here in NZ (although the luxury of these places is stretching the definition of the word 'bach') . ...

With another frosty start to our day here in Canterbury it makes my mind turn to warming comfort food to keep the chill at bay. Celebrity chef Ray McVinnie recently published a few winter warming recipes in the Sunday Star Times and well known wine writer John Saker chose our 2007 Waipara Pinot Noir as the perfect match. Sounds like a great idea and I will be ...

The FIFA World Cup may have unearthed Paul the Octopus as the one of the great psychics of all time, surpassing even the legendary Punxsutawney Phil in his ability to get it right,  but here at Sandihurst we have our own legend in the making - Woody the Winefly. Not only can he correctly predict if I have just ...

Don't you just love the French? Nothing can stop them enjoying their favourite drink! Sandihurst wine lesson #1: Always have corkscrew. Lesson #2: Watch this video...

A few pictures and a belated report back. 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 ...

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 ...

Its Riesling but not as we know it. This year I have been experimenting in the winery, trying a different approach to my winemaking with a small batch of  Riesling. Picked with relatively normal parameters I have opted not to whole bunch press the fruit as would normally be the case but instead have held the fruit ...