media lunchAs you’re no doubt aware from watch­ing Short­land Street, it’s duck-hunt­ing sea­son. Usu­al­ly this means that Cloudy Bay would be doing duck & pinot noir pair­ings around the coun­try, but this year they’ve decid­ed to do some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent and pos­si­bly a lit­tle more acces­si­ble - pinot noir & pro­sciut­to — “bring­ing you the per­fect pair­ing to sat­is­fy the instinc­tive desire for warm­ing red wine bal­anced with the rich­ness of dry-cured Pro­sciut­to.” For you, dear read­ers, last week we bit the bul­let and went along to their media tast­ing.

Launch­ing for the entire month of May, the excit­ing new offer­ing will give New Zealan­ders the chance to enjoy bespoke pair­ings of sig­na­ture pro­sciut­to dish­es designed to com­ple­ment the Cloudy Bay Pinot 2015 or the Te Wahi Cen­tral Ota­go Pinot Noir 2015, avail­able at a set price from par­tic­i­pat­ing restau­rants in Welling­ton and nation­wide.

table of meat and cheese and wineTo fur­ther bring Pinot and Pro­sciut­to to life, Cloudy Bay has teamed up with Kate Marinkovich and Fox­glove in Welling­ton to host a tick­et­ed Pinot & Pro­sciut­to Mas­ter­class high­light­ing ele­ments of pro­sciut­to paired with the Cloudy Bay Pinot Noir range on Wednes­day May 16th from 5:30 – 7pm.

We had­n’t been to Fox­glove since that Welling­ton on a Plate din­ner, so I’d for­got­ten just what a gor­geous space it is, espe­cial­ly when you’re greet­ed by a table groan­ing under the weight of six dif­fer­ent kinds of meat, fresh figs from a secret tree in Mount Vic, cheeses, greens, breads — basi­cal­ly my idea of heav­en. It was a lit­tle chilly on a rainy day though, so you might want to bring a cardie.

But we were to stare at the spread for a while longer, as the wine mak­er talked us through Cloudy Bay and the wines we had before us, and Exec Chef Eric Lee from Fox­glove talked us through some facts about pro­sciut­to (Heather over at Food­ie Gems was sit­ting clos­er and man­aged to retain some info — check out her post). Then ‘plat­ter arti­san’ Kate Marinkovich from Tomboy stepped up to talk us through how she’d assem­ble a plat­ter, and we were encour­aged to start mak­ing our own as she talked. Hur­ray! This is what I end­ed up mak­ing, though it did­n’t stay that pret­ty for long as I devoured it hun­gri­ly.

a platter of meat

four kinds of meatThere were so very many dif­fer­ent kinds of pre­served meats to try, and very gen­er­ous amounts of both of the Pinots, so con­ver­sa­tion got qui­eter as mouths got fuller. I think the Te Wahi Cen­tral Ota­go Pinot Noir was my favourite over the Mal­bor­ough, because it tast­ed more fer­al, and that went very well with the salt of the pig. Giv­en the wine retails for $99 a bot­tle, it was real­ly nice to be able to try it in a sub­stan­tial amount, because I’m unlike­ly to be able to buy it ever.

If you want to indulge just like us, you can! Because there’s a mas­ter class open to the pub­lic for $85 on May 16, where you’ll get the info, the wine, the meat and also a beau­ti­ful wood­en board to take home with you after­wards. The table will look absolute­ly beau­ti­ful and hope­ful­ly they will be as gen­er­ous with the serv­ings as they were with us on this occa­sion. Get your tick­ets here.

As well as the mas­ter class, you can get spe­cial dish­es at Fox­glove or The Grand Mer­cure that are served with the wine if you want to try out the com­bo your­self.