2012 Central Otago Pinot noir Celebration

Over the weekend Amisfield joined together with 40 other Central Otago wine producers, wine lovers and media from all over the world to celebrate our great grape.

The Friday began with the Grand Tasting where delegates spent the morning at Northburn Station tasting their way through 2010 Pinot noirs as well as older vintages. The morning was opened by Jen Parr of Olssens who presented a arguably great cover of Queens "We are the Champions".





Steph and Jasper poured our 2009 Amisfield Pinot Noir next to the 2006 Amisfield Rocky Knoll Pinot Noir.

Delegates also samples some local Whitestone cheeses.

Friday at the winemakers party at Millbrook guests were great on entry with a glass of the Amisfield Brut NV. Before enjoying some great food and local music.

Saturday morning began with a Burgundy tasting which brought up some interesting discussion concerning sub regionality in Central Otago and what can be learnt for Burgundy's history.

Lunch time was spent at restaurants around Queenstown where the 2009 Amsifeld Fume Blanc was enjoyed buy the guests at the Rees Hotel. It was beautifully matched with a deconstructed bread and butter pudding.

The Grand Dinner was held this year at the Skyline restaurant in Queenstown with great wines, food, atmosphere and entertainment. The dinner concluded with a Charitable Auction of a special cuvee of Central Otago Pinot Noir.

Doug Frost MW MS from the USA gave an entertaining speach to get the night going.

A great event enjoyed by all with a great sense of community in the region bringing together our great wines, food and people. Look forward to the next one in 2014!

Remarkables Primary School Induction Day!

Remarkables Primary School held their induction day at Amisfield Winery & Bistro. New staff members had to complete a series of challenges at Amisfield for a reward of a bottle of wine for lunch.

Under and over our famous tractor!

Max Caulton handing over the coverted bottle of Amisfield Sauvignon Blanc.

Well done guys and good luck for the 2012 school year!

Another convert to Riesling

How fantastic that there is a movement to promote the enjoyment of Riesling. Another movement sweeping the world but one in which the supporters are not setting up cardboard boxes on Wall Street but laying down their picnic blankets on a grassy knoll. No doubt all of us have memories of a moment, a setting or an occasion when we really enjoyed a great meal, a refreshing boutique beer or a special glass of wine.

My mother, who like many kiwi women of the 1980’s, enjoyed her nightly tipple of sherry was converted to Riesling (or rise-ling as she pronounces it) in the late 1990’s while on a trip to Adelaide. While waiting for me to finish class at the University she sat in the elegant Art Gallery cafe on North Terrace surrounded by Rodin sculpture and tried her first glass of Riesling. Whether it was a Clare Valley or Adelaide hills is unknown but it no doubt was a fusion of lime, honey, honeysuckle, oily in texture but with a dry acid finish. She raved about her new found friend so much that I decided to do my premier harvest, 1998, in the Clare Valley at Leasingham wines. Little did I know how immersed in Riesling I was to become. I lived on the local wine tasting bike trail known as the Riesling trail and spent the first two weeks before harvest travelling by bike or car all around the district lunching and tasting at the likes of Skillogalee, the Mintaro pub, the Watervale pub, kilikanoon. A truly beautiful part of South Australia and the Rieslings were incredible. My first harvest was perhaps one of my hardest working what felt like 3 months nonstop as the laboratory manager alongside a French man from Cognac. I learnt to have a great fondness of Cognac but there’s another story about another great drink.

During my 5 months in the Clare valley I tasted all its great variety from the new vintage clean crisp style of Riesling to the aged Rieslings that exhibit petroleum like characters. The next phase in my Riesling odyssey was in Oregon, tasting wines with my colleague and then boss Paul Pujol. He came to Oregon from Alsace where he had been making wine for Kuentz bas. Paul introduced me to the “old” world style of winemaking. The Rieslings were magnificent and many a night we would travel across the appellations of Alsace by wine tasting. Paul explaining the nuances of each terroir as we went.

For me Riesling really is the prettiest of grapes. It is so delicate and expresses itself and the land from which it has grown in the most beautiful of ways - with refinement and precision. Now I have opportunities to try to emulate my past discoveries in my present and future work in the incomparable Central Otago Region. Experience worth passing to the next generation in due time.

Here’s Cheers Jasper, my lad.

Summer of Riesling at Amisfield!

The Summer of Riesling is upon us http://www.summerofriesling.co.nz/ and Amisfield is here to celebrate with both the Amisield Dry Riesling and Lowburn Terrace Riesling.

Central Otago
Is one of the regions in the world which has a climate well suited to the variety. We have long hot days and cool evenings, we have mostly glacial and alluvial soils at a range of elevations creating the terraces Riesling thrives on.

Amisfield Wine Company
At Amisfield we make two Rieslings, they are both planted in a small valley protected from the desiccating northwesterly winds. This combined with Lochar gravel soils gives our Rieslings great minerality and length to accompany intense stone fruit and citrus characters.



To read more about the Amsifeild Riesling see; http://www.amisfield.co.nz/wines/varieties/riesling

The Riesling at Amisfield is planted in 2 blocks, the older vines of the Rocky Knoll area and younger vines on a beautiful elevated terrace above the winery. The sites are low vigour and our Riesling yields small berried fruit with excellent concentration and uniformity. Great emphasis is placed on canopy management so that we have good consistency with our Riesling year to year. Below is a picture of what our 2012 Riesling currently looks like and also a view from our block 1 Riesling.

The Riesling passion/bug does not just finish in the vineyard and winery with Vaughan (Executive Chef) and his team at the Amisfield Bistro creating dishes to match with the aromatic Rieslings.

Currently on the menu the kitchen has a couple of dishes that sychronise perfectly with the Dry Riesling. Below on the left is the Apples, orange, hazelnuts, marjoram juice with wild greens and manuka dressing. On the right we have salt crusted beets, foraged cress, aubergine and fresh cheese.












We can't forget the infamous Amisfield pork belly which arguably matches better with the Lowburn Terrace Riesling than the Pinot noir?? We will have to test that theory out a few more times...

Watch this space as events unfold at Amisfield and around Central Otago as the Summer of Riesling continues.

What are the grape vines doing for xmas?

Summer is in full swing in the vineyard as the guys are busy shoot thinning and shoot positioning as the first signs of the next years harvest beging to show up on the vines.

Currently the vines are flowering which can be seen here. This event starts with the opening of the individual flowers, pollen being liberated and ovules becoming fertilised.

Fertilisiation leads to berries being set and the caps on the small berries dropping off. This can be seen below in our Clone 115 Pinot noir.

Currently we are between 50 and 90% through flowering across the estate.

Speaking of flowering, the wild flowers are popping up all over the vineyard which not only keeps the bees happy but looks pretty good.

While in the winery the little bugs (Oenococcus oeni ) seen below have finished their job in the Pinot noirs.

THE NEW RECRUIT

Amisfield's winemaker Stephanie Lambert has recently brought young Jasper Lambert to the world. While the rest of NZ was glued to the world cup final Jasper was busy taking his first breath on the 23rd of October.

There is no messing around at Amisfield as Jasper is already showing off his green thumb.

Young Jasper is seen here more than excited to be out in the vineyard getting the early childhood version of flowering and shoot positioning.

Fume anyone?

How to spend a wed night.... With the sun dropping behing Mt Roy, Wanaka, its not a bad time to crack a bottle of Fume blanc and pull the asparagus and mushroom lasagne out of the oven. Cheers!

The Amisfield Fume blanc was made from hand selected Sauvignon Blanc bunches from the Pisa estate. 100% of the juice was gently pressed as whole bunches directly to new and old French oak barriques, where it fermented with wild yeast. The wine underwent a long slow primary fermentation with wild malolactic fermentation in the spring. This wine is a true pleasure to make as the flavour and aroma profile developed periodically over the 15 months it spent in oak leaving us, as winemakers, both constantly intrigued and fascinated throughout its maturation.

http://www.amisfield.co.nz/wines/varieties/fume-blanc