four women in a tattoo style label

Tasty tastings

Rules around advert­ising alco­hol are pretty strict. That’s why High­ball, Wel­ling­ton’s first spir­its & cock­tail fest­iv­al, was not able to tell you that for your $50 entry fee, you would abso­lutely be able to get your money’s worth of drunk in free samples. So instead it looked like you’d pay a lot of money to […]

Pig & Pinot – we’re as happy as pigs in mud

As 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 […]

WOAP 17: wine and whisky

It’s day five of this year’s Wel­ling­ton on a Plate and the city seems to be buzz­ing. So let’s get down to it. Here’s two events I went to on Sat­urday. Tapas & Tast­ings with Matahi­wi Wines at Avida Bar Wood­fire & Whisky at Ster­ling Tapas & Tast­ings I wrote about this last year, which maybe […]

Win a VIP double pass to the Wellington Wine and Food Festival

Wel­ling­ton is a city over­flow­ing with good res­taur­ants and fine drops to drink. It seems ridicu­lous that we haven’t had our own day-of-food-and-wine-and-oh-okay-fine-beer yet. Luck­ily, that’s about to change with the cun­ningly named Wel­ling­ton Food and Wine Fest­iv­al. The Fest­iv­al brings togeth­er the best of loc­al food, wine, bever­ages and res­taur­ants, out­doors on the water­front […]

LCB, TK and Sunday Stroopwafels

LCB.  Le Cor­don Bleu.  Learned culin­ary bestowers. Legends of cre­ativ­ity and bon­homie (yeah yeah enough already…). The LCB WOAP Haute Cuisine du Terroir on Fri­day night was pretty impress­ive (not least for being nearly five hours of imbib­ing instead of the planned three!).  Sev­en courses of French food matched with each an old world Bur­gundy […]

Brancott all dressed up and ready to WOW you

We’ve really enjoyed going to  the Bran­cott Estate World of Wear­ableArt Awards Show over the past couple of years, back from when the nam­ing rights spon­sor had a dif­fer­ent name. We’ve also really enjoyed wine over the past twenty years or so as well. Nat­ur­ally, some­thing that mixes the two is going to make us happy.  Bran­cott […]

Steak frites: does what it says on the box

If you’re after a clas­sic and hearty meal, then we heart­ily recom­mend you hoof it to Le Met­ro­pol­it­an on Cuba Street. In fact, we sug­gest you go there on Monday March 14 espe­cially when they’re hav­ing a fun­draiser for Christ­ch­urch. How about I tell you about the din­ner I had there recently in order to […]

It’s Wine Time

I know we talked about this last year, when we made fun of John McGrath (you know, just for a change) but I feel the need to remind y’all that the Wair­ar­apa Wine Har­vest Fest­iv­al is com­ing up again.

And now I can say for cer­tain that it really is the most kick­ass day ever. Just $25 gets your tick­et into the shindig, and you can get a shuttle from the train for $15. Taste wines from all kinds of boutique wine­makers around the Wair­ar­apa, many of whom don’t have a cel­lar door. Laugh as the man from Mae­bus describes his favour­ite Pinot Noir as tast­ing “like angels for­nic­at­ing in your mouth” – and try and get in his good books in case he really is in with Google. Watch my par­ents try and win half a case of wine with their awe­some dan­cing skills again. But one sug­ges­tion: don’t try and walk on rolling bar­rels. You will just fall off, hit your head and cry.

investing for the future

There are many kinds of invest­ments avail­able on the mar­ket today: put­ting a little some­thing aside for later can be very reward­ing. One of our favour­ite kinds is a bottle or two of nice wine. And where bet­ter to source your invest­ment than just over the hill from Wel­ling­ton, in Mar­tin­bor­ough? Set aside a Sunday. […]