hotel gardens

A small break here before I press on.  I would be remiss if I didn't share photos from the hotel gardens.  The fruits and vegetables they grew supplied the restaurant.  Hotel guests were free to roam the gardens, and there were places to sit and just enjoy the peace of the space. 

The Il Monastero grounds also included a small vineyard.  Indeed, there was wine produced and bottled.  I don't think we tried it, alas, and the vines had been harvested not long before we traveled there.  Still, it made for a lovely setting, especially with part of the castle complex looming above.

Some garden photos, then.  More to come from Ischia and the rest of Italy! 

Round Barn Winery

Many are the states that make wine - all of them, in fact. A week or so ago, Conrad and I decided to finally open a bottle of a Maui Syrah we purchased from a winery there last year. It was... interesting. Far better than the Carlos and Noble. More "interesting" than the Missouri wine. We thought it was kind of watery, and as we went on, the initial appealing funk became more than we cared for.

We've also had Michigan wine before, both at wineries and at restaurants and homes. We've been told the names of some good wineries, too, though we don't think we've stumbled upon them in our travels. Tabor Hill is a name that comes up, and we enjoyed generous pours of it at the rehearsal dinner I have yet to blog. But it's not our favourite, no. Instead, we turn to Round Barn Winery, a place we came upon while out with Darth and Heidi a few years back.

(Long story about ViJ's here, ask me another day.)

The day after the wedding we dropped by Tina's parents' home for the send-off brunch, and - with a little food in our bellies - we set out through gently rolling landscape clothed in cornfields and grape vines. Ah, the vines, heavy with ripe berries.
When will they pick them all.

Frankly, I'm not a fan of the grape wines from Michigan with rare exception, and the visit this time to Round Barn didn't dispel that notion much. The Chardonnay, for example, had a big, oaky nose, but was like water in our mouths. Conrad liked the regular Cab but thought the reserve Cab was lacking. We tried several grape wines, in fact, and at best they were ok.

Ah, but the fruit wines, the fruit wines. Oh, scorn fruit wine if you will, but it can be a lovely thing to sip alone, or with cheese or desert or even some savoury foods. We're huge fans of the black walnut, and were dismayed that they had none. Our spirits (ha! see what I did there?) lifted when they told us it was coming out later this year.

The fruit wines were as lovely as we recalled from years past, and we happily bought a handful of bottles. Declining the beer tasting, we headed outside, took some photos, and began the (happily not too long) trek back around the bend of the lake to Chicago.

NZ wines: Otago

When we did our first trip to New Zealand in 2007, we had a lot - A LOT - of discussion about potential itineraries. So many places to see and things to experience. How to figure it all out and draw up a do-able schedule?

Well, what do we like? Food, obviously. Also wine. And that became the core of that 2007.

One other good thing on that visit was getting re-acquainted with Dion and meeting his wife, Minna. As it turns out, they, too like wine. Serendipity! Happier still for Conrad, they rather like their Pinot Noir. Best of all, New Zealand, and Central Otago in particular, is gaining ever greater and deserving renown for its Pinots. Of course we began the trip own there. And so, on our second day in New Zealand and under gloriously sunny skies, we set out tasting.

I don't have any photos from our first stop, The Big Picture. It's a good idea, a wine experience parked out among vineyards and offering tastings of several wines. I just wish they were offering better wines. The six pours were not very distinct from each other, frankly, and I found the wines unexceptional. Nonetheless, it was lovely to sit out in the sun and begin the tasting, if tentatively. We ended up not buying any of the six Pinots we tried, but we found, instead, the lovely Valli Pinot Noir we'd had the night before at Saffron (blog posting to come). That first stop paid off a few nights ago when we enjoyed the bottle over a quiet Saturday dinner in.

On to the first proper winery: Rockburn. Conrad loves that rock wall there.
We all liked the wines we tried, in fact. We came away with two of their moderate label, the evocatively named Devil's Staircase (a mountain feature on the lakeside south of Queenstown), and enjoyed the Pinot Noir a few nights later while in the Catlins. The Pinot Gris came home with us. A delightful start.



Mt. Difficulty was up next,

and what an experience that was. I'll embarrass myself now by forgetting the name of the man who took us round, but it was a fantastic customized visit to a winery whose Pinot Noir we'd enjoyed a number of times. Minna's company owns (or is it distributes) the wines, and so she had arranged this special visit.



Wow. What a thrill, getting a look at what the workings were on the day before the grapes were to be harvested. They took such good time and care with us, it was remarkable. And hey, great wine. We couldn't taste the high end single vineyard ones, but we trust they'll be good, and we came home with a bottle. Also, a cap and a t-shirt - I love the logo. Oh, and a dry Riesling. What struck me over the course of the say was that Otago may be known for its Pinot Noir, but I liked a lot of the Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Chardonnay I tasted. It made for a more complete experience that day.

Anyway, the tour done, we ventured up to the winery restaurant with its gorgeous view of the river valley below.
Those hoodoos over there? Left behind by former mining activity in the area. Lunch on the sunny patio, and it was hare for me.
Hare. Cool! We sat by a handsome little water feature and relaxed quite nicely.



Next up was just a short drive, next door as these things go. Another lovely setting. Grapes ripening, protected from birds.
Conrad picked up some
fallen on the ground - somehow, they still look so appealing. Felton Road is a producer of highly-sought and high-quality wines. Some of them are for mailing list clients only, and there is a waiting list to get on the mailing list! I'll say two things:

• The wines we tasted were magnificent. I tasted a vin gris - a rose left pale as can be - and loved it. The "regular" Pinot Noir? Super! Oh, and what was that I spied? An opened bottle of an exclusive single-vineyard Pinot? Oh no, the woman, protested, it's been open for a few days, left over from some event. No worries, I said, I'm sure it's fine. Oh yeah, it was fine. Very fine. Easy to see why there's a waitlist. Sad not to be able to sip more.
• The woman behind the counter should work in another part of the winery away from customers. Sorry. She was very pinched in manner and acted as if it was incredibly disagreeable to her to have to have strangers come in and want to buy wine.

We left with a couple of bottles, of course.



Up next: Akarua. This seemed so much more low key a place, and the wines were more modest. No worries, modest by comparison to Felton Road is not a bad thing. This was another place where I liked the whites as well, and we ended up with not just Pinot Noir but an unoaked Chardonnay as well.

Carrick. Wow, a lot of wine already consumed. Conrad and Dion kind of eased off at this point (and Minna, in case I hadn't mentioned it, was our designated driver - we hope that when Peaches Honeyblossom is born next stuff, that Mom and daughter will be healthy). No matter, my tastebuds go on. Sadly, my memory is dreadful, and though we did buy a bottle, I cannot recall it. Fair enough. I liked the place and its wines, but I wasn't blown away by them.

Still with me? Good. Two more (plus) to go! The last one before dinner was sort of my request, based on looking at the map and past experience: Wooing Tree. Love that name. It ended up having a cozy cottage feel to it. Again, good wines. We've got a bottle of Pinot Noir here with us at home.

You can tell that we were flagging at this point - we weren't buying as much, and I'm writing less and less. Two more stops, though up next was a bit of a snack. We'd been drinking all day, but we needed something else. Though we didn't go to the winery here, we did like a break with some cheese at Gibbston Valley.

And then it was on to Amisfield.
Ah, we'd looked forward to this one. A year and a half ago we'd marveled at one of its wines over Boxing Day dinner at NoMI. Now we would visit the winery AND have dinner there. On such a lovely, sunny day, what could be better?


The darn thing is, we didn't actually have a range of wines. A bottle with dinner, and not even our favourite bottle of the day. Ah, who cares? Come on? What a setting, out there on that sunny patio.

Dinner served in multiple courses family style, with some risotto, salmon, beef, salad, and more even.



All very very satisfying.

We chuckle at our holidays being planned around wine, but really, look at the day we had, the company we had, and read what I say about the wines and the food. Is it any wonder we do? Now all we have to do is figure out how to persuade Minna to organize similar days in the future...