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.