How to Blog Taste and Smell?

When someone works out how to use the internet to convey tastes and smells and please let us know. We would love to be able to let you enjoy our wines over the web. Until technology catches up with us (I bet it will!), we're planing to video Clive Dougall, our wine maker, talking about our wines and we will post the videos here over the next few weeks - unless you sit there with a glass of wine at the same time, you'll just have to listen to him and let your imagination do the rest.

If we had this technology now, we could also use it to let you smell our tractor. We've converted it to run on biodiesel, produced from used cooking oil, and as it goes past it gives off pleasant restaurant-cooking smells. Imagine that.

Wine Weekend

We were pleased to be part of the Marlborough Wine Weekend this past weekend. Along with 34 other Marlborough wineries, we poured a number of our wines for guests - consumers, wine writers and restaurateurs from around New Zealand. Seresin's 2005 Chardonnay Reserve, 2006 Marama, 2006 Pinot Gris, 2006 Leah Pinot Noir and 2007 Sauvignon Blanc all made appearances over the weekend. The Seresin 2005 Raupo Creek Single Vineyard Pinot Noir was selected as one of 3 Marlborough wines in an international tasting of Pinot Noir.

Tastings were held in each of Marlborough's distinct sub-regions illustrating the different characteristics typical of those areas - picturesque settings adding to the memorability of the ocassion and etching the differences in flavours firmly on the mind and palate.

Guests enjoyed fine food prepared by Marlborough's Chris Fortune and Martin Bosley from , Martin Bosley's Yacht Club in Wellington - New Zealand's Cuisine magazine's 2007 Restaurant of the Year.

Whale Watching, Eye to Eye

When a southern right whale decided to spend some time visiting Wellington recently, Polly Greeks had a ring-side seat to enjoy the action; the whale spent 15 hours playing about in the water below her deck.

In Polly's words: "It was up there amongst the most brilliant things I've ever seen. [That's saying something from what we know about Polly's adventures all over the world]. It was 12-metres long and spent the entire day just lolling around off the rocks. Sometimes it lay on its back waving its giant flippers out of the water and other times it raised its whole upper body from the water, nearly causing car crashes all along the coast road. I could still hear it in the evening when it was too dark to see it any longer."

Polly's neighbour, cinematographer Simon Baumfield, took these photos after an up-close-and-personal encounter diving with the whale. "Simon said he was swimming with the whale for about half an hour, and really wanting to get a photo of its eye, when it tucked its giant fin in to the side of its body to allow him to get in close enough. It was also making very low, deep sounds which vibrated right through him, and he found himself spontaneously making the same sounds back".

Thanks Polly, for bringing some magic to our day, and to Simon for the beautiful images.

It's not all black ...

The 'Drink Tank' team at our UK distributor Armit selected the 2006 'Leah' Pinot Noir as their wine of the week after it achieved first or second place from all of the seven judges in a blind tasting of six wines from France, Italy, Spain, USA and New Zealand.

Armit reported:
Whilst the All Blacks are heading home with tear-streaked cheeks and reputations in tatters, there is one New Zealander holding his head high this week. Michael Seresin, the founder, creator and dynamic force behind Seresin Estate can be rightly proud of his winning performance in the armit Drink Tank Taste-Off. The Webb Ellis Trophy will have to wait until 2011 but for those who wish to see New Zealand performing at its best, there can be no better way than cracking the cap on a bottle of Leah. Rich, generous and broad but with the definition and purity of great Pinot Noir for all to see, this is a brilliantly versatile, inspiring example of what can be produced in the land of the long white cloud.

2007 Seresin 'Memento' Riesling

A well known UK wine writer who visited us recently, described the 2007 Seresin 'Memento' Riesling as "the perfect mid-morning wine". Judging by the reaction to the wine at today's Marlborough Farmers' Market, he may be onto something. It was a big hit with those tasting it at the market this morning in fine, warm weather.

As well as the buzz of spring weather and the opening day of the market, sales were also helped by Karl du Fresne's write up in this morning's 'Sunday' magazine. He described it as an "exquistely pure, fragrant and delicate Germanic-style example" of New Zealand Riesling.

If you can't wait for dinner to try it, enjoy it anytime from brunch onwards.

View from the top of NZ (House)

Seresin Estate is pleased to support the exhibition of works by Peter McIntyre OBE at Jonathan Grant Galleries in Parnell, opening on October 25th.

Peter McIntyre OBE is a New Zealand artist of distinction and renown. In the 30's he became known as one of New Zealand's most innovative artists and in 1941 was appointed New Zealand's official war artist serving directly under General Bernard Freyberg.

Having travelled extensively, the exhibition features many of McIntyre's favourite themes and locations - from rural New Zealand and abroad. Images of all the paintings can be seen on the gallery's website.

The image of McIntyre's work shown here, is Panorama of London with Trafalgar Square, St. Paul's and the Thames beyond from the rooftop of New Zealand House, 1963. (Hey, you can almost see Michael Seresin's house from here !)

The exhibition runs until November 12th.

Lovely Vessels

When Michael Seresin saw work by ceramic artist Raewyn Atkinson at Wellington's Avid Gallery, he was so taken by it that he approached Raewyn to make him a special set of dinnerware for his home in the Marlborough Sounds.

We're grateful that Raewyn agreed. Not only do her plates and bowls now grace Michael's dining table at Waterfall Bay, they are for sale and we use them to showcase our Extra Virgin Olive oils at the Estate's cellar door. The vibrant green of the oil looks even more beautiful in the fine, translucent dishes.

And now, Raewyn's dinnerware, is available for sale at Vessel in Wellington.

Video Introduction

With the help of our friends at Wellington's Film School we prepared a short video introducing Seresin Estate, our wines and oils and some of our philosophies and practices.

We hope you find it of interest.

If there's anything else you'd like to see, let us know.

Inbox Sweetness

The Quakebake Newsletter is one of the highlights in my email inbox. Quakebake are a certified organic, artisan bakery in the Hawkes Bay who hand-make a range of sweet and savoury gluten free treats, German style Gingerbreads, and Italian style biscotti. Its newsletters promote a lot of things dear to my heart: obviously there's biscuits and slices but also matters including slow food, farmers' markets, romance (a free sweetheart cookie for your Valentine last year) and having a say on issues you care about.

In today's newsletter owner Robert Haas shared a recipe for Orange and Almond Biscotti which is reproduced below with permission (thanks Robert).

For someone selling biscotti, this was an interesting move, but Robert explained his reasoning like this: "Whilst I'm more than happy to sell Quakebake products to you, and actually rely on you to buy my products every now and then, I still think there is a certain emotional quality in home-made food, that even an artisan baker like me can't deliver on. That emotional quality is an intrinsic part of enjoying food and living a good and fulfilled life. It may look insignificantly small and negligible in our busy worlds of today, but it is there, and it can't be replaced by other means."

Good on you Robert ! We agree and hope many people enjoy making their own biscotti at home as well as enjoying other products from your range.

Make sure you have a look at Quakebake's website (http://www.quakebake.co.nz/) to sign up for the newsletter, to be tempted by Robert's range of organic biscuits and slices and for more mouth watering recipes.

ORANGE AND ALMOND BISCOTTI

Ingredients:

• 2 whole eggs
• 250 g sugar
• 80 g slivered almonds
• zest of 1 orange (finely grated)
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla essence
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 250 g flour (preferably cake flour)

Method:

• Pre-heat oven to 180 degree Celsius.
• Cream the eggs with the sugar.
• Add the grated orange zest, the almonds and the vanilla essence.
• Sieve the flour with the baking powder and add to the mix.
• Shape in two longish loaves directly on the baking paper of your baking tray (it will be reasonably sticky, use wet hands).
• Put the tray into the oven, turn temperature down to 160 and bake for 35 min.
• Pull the biscotti out of the oven, cool a little down and cut with a serrated knife (bread knife) into slices approximately 1 cm thick.
• Spread out on the baking tray and bake another 15 min., for a more even baking result you can turn the biscotti after 8 min.
• Once the biscotti have cooled down, store them in an airtight container.
  

Tips:

• Coat one end with chocolate, simply melt in a water bath or in the microwave 200 g dark chocolate (e.g. the Fairtrade dark chocolate from the TradeAid shops is very good).
• Dip one end of the biscotti in, or the bottom of the biscotti, which ever you prefer.
• Rest the coated biscotti on a wire rack until set, then store in an airtight container.
• If the chocolate shows some white coating after a few days, don't worry this is called chocolate blume and is harmless. It doesn't look perfect this way, but is not affecting the flavour (it is caused by the cocoa butter which started to crystallise because the temperature of the melted chocolate wasn't perfect - you would need to do what is called tempering, but to do this efficiently you would need a marble slab in you kitchen!

Spring Rainbow

While the recent rains may have dampened spring spirits, there's nothing like the appearance of a rainbow to make one stop in wonder...

(No pots of gold found)