I was surprised by the overt oak in these wines. It comes through as flavour (like chewinga pencil), or as part of the structure, (like a dusty grip on the finish). Oak can enhance a wine but unless you relish it, wines of this type are usually more delicious with a few years bottle age.
The trend for using grains is growing fast, judging by the number of recent cookbooks on grains, often referred to as ancient grains.
Gasworks are not usually associated with the arts, but as the Dunedin Gasworks Museum celebrates a 150th anniversary, many art activities are in the pipeline. Charmian Smith reports.
When Stephen De Pledge was a small child growing up in the Wairarapa, he played his little coloured xylophone all day, so his parents bought a piano, which led him to an international career as a pianist.
With warm weather coming early this year, it's time for rosés, one of the ideal lazy lunch or easy evening wines to go with fresh salads and other light food.
Guigal is a family wine producer in the Rhone Valley in France that has developed an enviable international reputation for its wines over several decades.
An all-Dunedin line up of singers, including two of Dunedin's favourite sopranos, Anna Leese and Emma Fraser, will be singing in the Southern Sinfonia's last subscription concert for the year on Saturday. Charmian Smith catches up.
A new commission by Wellington composer Gareth Farr features in a concert by the Goldner Quartet in Dunedin on Tuesday.
Pinot noir can vary from fruit bombs to dense, extracted wines with almost too muchflavour, from complex, textural, savoury ones, to fresh, charming ones that dance on the tongue.
I've been enjoying using samples of Laughing Frog's oils flavoured with rosemary, lemon and garlic.
Music written 400 years ago still has the power to move us today, according to John Griffiths. He talks to Charmian Smith.
Although chardonnay has fallen from fashion in the past few years, good chardonnay is delicious - it is also the grape behind some of the great white wines of France.
Albariño is an exciting new variety in New Zealand. Attractive, fresh, mouth-filling and food friendly, it's originally from the north west of Spain and Portugal. Aficionados will also want to explore some of these good value rieslings.
Benjamin Britten's string quartets are highly regarded and have fabulous textures and soundscapes, according to Gillian Ansell of the New Zealand String Quartet.
We have a hunger for being told our own stories, according to theatre director Conrad Newport. He tells Charmian Smith about Gifted, a play about two of New Zealand's leading literary figures that reimagines a famous literary friendship.
Sarah Bowman, a Christchurch dietitian and food writer, shares her family favourites in her first book, Cook Simple: Fresh meal ideas for busy lives (Penguin).
There's more to theatre than acting and putting on plays. To make a living as a theatre practitioner in Dunedin you have to turn your hand to many things, Cindy Diver tells Charmian Smith.
At a party I went to recently guests had brought almost three times as many sauvignon blancs as othervarieties. It's certainly popular and no wonder, with a fragrance that leaps out of theglass and, in the best, mouth-filling fruit and a crisp, lively finish.
''People prick up their ears when you say you are living on $2.25 a day. It's a shockingly small amount,'' says Hannah-Rose Hart.
Anyone can dance, disabled or not, old or young, even if they haven't had a dance background, says Hahna Briggs. She tells Charmian Smith about her project as 2013 Caroline Plummer Fellow in Community Dance at the University of Otago.