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 |  is paved with good intentions... |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Hi, I'm Elle. I'm based in Auckland, New Zealand. I'm the mother of two young adults, the wife of an entrepreneurial gamer and the Queen of Unfinished Projects. This blog will contain poems, short stories, possibly photos and book reviews if you're lucky, and my thoughts on a variety of topics. Hope you enjoy it. |
Make an A-Z list on a topic of your choosing. ~ "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  By recording all the wines I've tried/tasted, I'm starting to get a decent list of ones I like. And, of course, ones I don't. I thought I'd see if I could do an A-Z list of wines I've tried. Bonus if I can do it only with ones I liked, but I doubt that!  Amisfield Pinot Noir (2016). My boss likes this, and although we both drink pinot noir, we don't have the same tastes. This one was nice though. Big Sky Pinot Noir (2015). Had a really unique flavour. Should cellar well, so we have two bottles of this at home, one for drinking, one for saving. China Girl Pinot Noir by Crown Range Cellars (2016). Yum. Bought a bottle of this last weekend after trying it. Doctor's Flat Pinot Noir (2012). Was very impressed with this. We bought some newer vintages to cellar as we were told they'd improve age into something similar to the 2012. Element Wines Syrah (2016). This was a tad too sharp for me, but Steve liked it. I thought it might improve with cellaring. Aitken's Folly Pinot Noir (2015). Definitely drinkable. Gran Familia Rioja Reserva (2012). I haven't tried many tempranillo, but I found this light and quite easy to drink. Hopes Grove Syrah (2015). Nice for drinking now, we've got a bottle in the wine rack. Wai Iti Pinot Noir by The Boneline (2017). Too sharp for my tastes. Jackson's Block Pinot Noir by Terra Sancta (2016). Light and dry. Koyama Pinot Noir (2017). Woody smell. Very sharp, strong tannins. Maybe needs cellaring for a few years? Luna Blue Rock Pinot Noir (2016). Peppery smell. I really enjoyed this and we bought a bottle for the wine rack. Squawking Magpie The Gravels Syrah (2017). Light and reasonably smooth. Black Noble by De Bortoli. Too raisin-y for my tastes. The Obsidian, by Obsidian Vineyard (2012). Best wine I've ever tasted. I don't have any left, and there is no more of the 2012 for sale, so I'm on the lookout for some of another year. If I was going to subscribe to a winery's 'club' to get access to en primeur deals, it'd be Obsidian's. The Patriarch by Babich (2015). We tried this at the vineyard and have a bottle waiting to be drunk. SQuealing Pig Pinot Noir (2016). Drinkable but no wow factor. Riverbank Road Rosé by Aitken's Folly (2018). Quite good for a rosé. Silver Lining by Hopes Grove (2014). Nice now, but we've bought it for cellaring, so it's stashed away in the dark to improve with age. Tupari Pinot Noir (2014). Bought a bottle of this on the weekend after tasting it. GUido in Velvet Pants by Coopers Creek (2015). Very sharp. So much for 'velvet'. Les Violettes by Mollard Cotes Du Rhone (2016). Dry and smooth. Went well with roast pork. Winemaker's Reserve Pinot Noir by Babich (2015). Peppery smell (which I find myself saying a lot, so it's obviously a smell that stands out to me). Quite smooth with no lingering aftertaste. I'm pretty sure we have a bottle of this in the wine rack. Possibly we've drunk it though. EXpressions Pinot Noir by The Hunting Lodge (2018). Very light, quite quaffable. StanleY Estates Lagrein (2016). Good flavour, just a touch too sharp. Perhaps needed more breathing or cellaring. Lustau Pedro XimeneZ. Very sweet. Had a strong raisin-y smell, but didn't taste as raisin-y as I expected, so I enjoyed it. Need to have it instead of dessert, not as well as. Well. I had to get a bit creative there!  |
| What are your weekend plans? If this weekend isn’t noteworthy, share your plans for an upcoming weekend or a past weekend that is worth writing about. ~ "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" On Sunday Steve and I went to the Craft’d Wine and Spirit Festival, part of Auckland’s Elemental AKL, Auckland’s winter festival. It was a chance to taste (and buy!) a bunch of wine and spirits from smaller wineries and distilleries around New Zealand, and even take some classes. We only did one ‘masterclass’, but it was quite interesting. It was called ‘Demystifying Wine for Newbies with The Imbibe Tribe’, run by Renée Dale. She taught us about primary, secondary and tertiary flavours that can be found in wines, but she did it by giving us small samples of those foods to smell. So we had things like basil, red licorice, cherries, ginger and dried apricots on the primary plate, aniseed, chocolate and cream on the secondary plate and star anise, cinnamon and coffee on the tertiary plate. We were asked to design a wine with a combination of flavours from each plate, which was a fun and interesting experiment. Then Renée spoke about how winemakers try to design wines with the perfect flavour combinations using just grapes, the fermentation process and the aging process. Then we got to try some wines and see how different foods (cheese, chocolate, potato crisps and lemon) affect their flavours. I didn’t have pen and paper, but I made some rudimentary notes. Moi Rosé 2018 – I’m not a fan of rosé, but this was okay. I thought the chocolate went best with it. Untitled White Blend – It’s not that I don’t know the name of this white wine, it’s actually called Untitled and they have a white blend, pink blend and red blend. I don’t like white wines, but I found this better with the lemon. Untitled Pinot3 – The Red Edition – I thought this had a fruity smell and was quite light. I didn’t like the aftertaste. Steve thought this went best with the cheese, but I don’t like soft cheese, so I didn’t try that combo and I thought it went best with chocolate. There was a red called Filigree, which I thought was by Moi, but I can’t see it on their website either. Ugh, next time I’m taking pen and paper! After the masterclass, we just went around the different stalls trying any wines that grabbed our attention. We got two tastes each for free (we didn’t get to choose which ones they were, so we ended up trying some more rosé which we normally wouldn’t) and after that we had to pay for each tasting. A taste ranged between $3-$6. Mon Cheval Rosé – Again, I don’t like rosé. This wasn’t bad, but not for me. Mon Cheval Pinot Noir 2011 – I didn’t like the smell. The taste was okay, but didn’t wow me. Aitken’s Folly Pinot Rosé – Not too bad, better than the Mon Cheval I thought. Aitken’s Folly Pinot Noir 2015 – This was quite nice. Definitely drinkable. Luna Estate Blue Rock Pinot Noir 2016 – I really enjoyed this. It had a peppery smell. We bought a bottle to take home. Luna Estate Eclipse Pinot Noir 2016 – This was too sharp for me, but Steve really liked it, and we bought a bottle to take home. Little Wing Methode Ancestrale 2018 – I really didn’t like this. Ugh. Fizzy and ugh. But if you like champagne or white sparkling wine (which I don’t), you might like it. Little Wing Syrah 2016 – This was quite peppery. I wasn’t wowed though. Tupari Pinot Noir 2014 – We thought this was quite nice and bought a bottle to take home. Tupari Kabinett Riesling 2016 – I found it quite drinkable, which surprised me because it was white. Sweeter than a regular white, but not too high in alcohol. Tupari Late Harvest Riesling 2017 – This was very sweet and had a syrupy mouth feel with a definite honey flavour. Silver Wing Jay Flight Pinot Noir 2016 – I really liked it. Silver Wing Reserve Pinot Noir 2014 – Steve really liked this and wanted to buy a bottle, but they didn’t have any available. I thought it wasn’t quite as good as the one above it. Silver Wing Late Harvest Riesling 2018 – I liked it. Nicer than the Tupari late harvest reisling I tried. Silver Wing Tawny Port 2014 – Aaaaand not on their website. I can’t figure out who the hell it is if it’s not Silver Wing though! I didn’t like the tawny port, and found it too raisin-y. Hopes Grove Syrah 2015 – Quite nice. We bought a bottle to take home. Hopes Grove Silver Lining Syrah 2014 – We thought this was quite nice, and the guy said that it would cellar well for up to 12 years. We bought a bottle to take home. Crown Range Cellar China Girl Pinot Noir – This was delicious, and we bought a bottle to take home. So altogether we bought six bottles to take home. We didn’t try any of the spirits. We’re not gin drinkers. Steve does like whisky, but the distillery that was there was Thomson, and he has already tried all their whiskies and owns most of them! If we go again next year, I’ll definitely take pen and paper, and I’ll take some crackers! It was hard to try so many without anything except water to cleanse the palate in between. Nice to restock the wine rack with some nice wines though! |
| Take us on a sensory journey to a place that is significant to you. Try to describe the place using all of your senses so we can be there with you! ~ "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" For me, I guess that's the farm I grew up on. I lived there until I was 17, so it made a pretty big impact on me. You know how they say that you can never go back? Yeah. It's changed so much. I read Charlie's post and he shared a poem that fit his post, and that's what got me thinking about my own response to this prompt. That's usually how it works. It's not the prompts themselves, but Charlie's responses to them that inspire me. Anyway, I'll do you a comparison. A poem I wrote when I was living on the farm, compared to a reflective look back. Of course, I had no Writing.com poetry teachers for the first one, but bear with me.
So the first one was everything I could see and hear while sitting on the deck (verandah) of the new house in the dark. I could hear the wind moving through the gum trees. We had a lot of native bush on our farm, but closest to the house was mostly paddocks (fields for animals to graze in) with gum trees to provide shade. I could hear the water gurgling in the creek if I listened hard enough. Of course I could hear livestock - cows and bulls mooing, sheep from the neighbour's property baaing... Sometimes we could hear horses, but not that night. We had horses at various stages, but they don't actually make a lot of noise normally. We always had cats and dogs, but again, they don't usually make a lot of noise at night. On a really still night we could hear the ocean, even though we were about a half hour drive away. More likely though, I'd hear morepork (native owls). I love hearing their distinctive cry. Did you know that if you mimic them, they'll come closer to investigate if you're a suitable mate?  It's quite cool to call an owl. That's what that 'mournful cry' line refers to. Even though I used the word mournful, it doesn't make me sad. I haven't mentioned in the poem the clicking of the power to the electric fences. It was on the opposite side of the house. It was a steady click that went off probably every two seconds. Sometimes I hear it in my dreams. Like a metronome almost. In my current house, we have a tin roof and sometimes there's a steady drip onto the roof and it reminds me of the clicking of the electric fence. There were no streetlights, so not much to see except the moon and the stars, and any light from the house spilling out into the garden. Sometimes a neighbour would drive up the road, but not often. We lived in a pretty quiet area. There were only three households further up the road I think. If they did it in the daytime, they'd kick up a cloud of dust, but at night you couldn't see the dust. The second poem is written about daytime memories, based on the old house. We had 330 acres, then my parents sold the house and 300 acres, and built a new house on the remaining 30 acres. I was about 13 when that happened. We'd wander up the race (the track used to move cattle between paddocks) and get to an old tin shed that housed the water pump. It pumped water from the creek to all the water troughs, I think. I'm sure the house used tank water, so the creek water must have been for the troughs. Anyway, it used to make a thumping, groaning sound. In front of the old house we had a small orchard. It had: - a couple of citrus trees - a peach tree - a nectarine tree - a couple of fig trees - some plum trees - about 10 feijoa trees. After we sold it, the new owners removed the orchard. I have a lot of memories of eating fruit from that orchard. On the other side, beside the big wooden gate that stopped cattle coming into the garden, was a loquat tree. It was big enough to sit in. Past the gate were two buildings and a cattle yard. I don't know what cattle yards are called overseas, but they're a series of wooden fences for containing and sorting cattle, and include a ramp to get the cattle onto trucks. Here's a picture of my dad in ours (many years ago!):  The haybarn was open on one side, and I think it had three bays. It was made with corrugated iron, and it was never full of hay. I think the tractor was stored in one bay, and maybe one bay had bales of hay in it. Can't remember. There were small holes in the walls and roof that allowed tiny shafts of sunlight to poke through every now and then, and I distinctly remember watching the dust motes from the hay dance in the sunlight. The other building was a small, old cowshed that wasn't used in my lifetime that I remember. I don't really have vivid memories of it. We didn't have milking cows, ours was a beef farm. Our neighbour milked cows though, and when they were away on holiday or whatever, Dad would milk their cows. I remember helping out. My little sister especially loved using the high pressure hose to clean the muck off the concrete floor. I remember walking through where the farmer walks to put the cups on the cows, and having to dodge incoming cow shit. I remember drinking warm milk straight out of the tank. Completely unpasteurised of course, and full cream. And warm. Ugh, I hate warm milk. I wrote about that in "Invalid Entry" . And I remember sitting on their water tank next to the cowshed and talking with the neighbours' girls (they had three daughters as well). And I have memories of listening to the milk tanker grind its way up the hill to our house, then go round the 'tanker track' to collect milk from the cowshed.If you followed the race far enough on the farm, you'd get to a concrete culvert (a small concrete bridge over the creek). We'd pick watercress there and have it on sandwiches with Marmite. I wrote about that too, in "Invalid Item" .And if you walked all the way to the furthest edge of our property, you'd be standing at the top of a hill. You'd see gorse and grass. Sometimes a wild deer if you were lucky (I lived there 17 years and I think I saw them twice maybe). You could look all the way to the West Coast of New Zealand, and if it was very still, you could hear the Tasman Sea on the West Coast and the Pacific Ocean on the East Coast. So yup, there you go. That's my description of the farm where I grew up. |
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