We’re sharing the love at our last official Wellington Wine Wednesday of the year at Regional Wines & Spirits in Wellington tonight from 5.30pm to 7pm… We are cracking open this outstanding champagne, which ticks all the taste boxes and then some, thanks to winemaker Pierre Larmandier… Champagne Larmandier Bernier Latitude is… Made from biodynamically grown grapes (think: organic but on a whole new level) Hand harvested and fermented with wild yeasts (no commercial yeasts added) Fermented in a combo of wood and stainless steel Aged on lees in the bottle for 2 years, which is 6 months long ..read more

I was once invited to post 5 positive things that happen to me every day on a private Facebook page. It’s a nice idea, but every day? Needless to say, posting 5 top wines once a week can be also be challenging but for different reasons… There are simply so many tasty wines made in and imported to New Zealand today. This weekly blog is about the creme de la creme of them. The following wines are the absolute bests that I’ve tried over the past seven days in my work as a wine writer and as Wine Programme Director (tastings, writing) at Regional Wines & Spirits in Wellington and also as ..read more

If you’re wandering around Wellington tonight between 5pm and 7pm, pop into Regional Wines for a free taste of an exceptional range of bubbles from Champagne Lallier… My blog on Champagne Lallier… Talk about modest. I’m talking about the price, not the big, beautiful taste of Champagne Lallier, which over deliver for the $50.99 you’ll spend on this wine. And the trio of Lallier bubbles will be open for a free tasting tonight at Regional Wines at the Basin Reserve in Wellington from 5pm to 7pm. Our team here at Regional had the tasty pleasure of checking out Lallier Champagnes this afternoon an ..read more

How many laps around the sun have you done? This weekend, I’ll be celebrating 50 of mine, or rather, a large number of friends will be helping me not to think too hard about what five decades may or may not signify. We’re having a party, which triples as a house warming for my boyfriend and I, and a double-50th for another wine loving friend. The only prerequisites are to bring a person you love and a bottle of wine you love – oh, and to be invited, of course. It’s a great excuse for me to crack open some of the wines I love, which includes this top list. 5 life changing wines Bolly… Champagne ..read more

Every silver lining has a cloud… said a friend at our three yearly catch up dinner last year. It’s not that we only want to catch up every three years. We live in different countries. It’s just how it pans out. And it pans out that we weren’t drinking champagne, but the silver linings  analogy sprang to mind at a tasting of Champagne Mumm late last week in Auckland. There we were, two of us writers faced with six high priced sparkling wines, 45 minutes to taste them and one travelling winemaker-marketer – Didier Mariotti from Champagne G H Mumm in F ..read more

Reposted by request as the top blog to end the year on a high note… It’s still early days and the highs and lows of relocating from this country’s largest city to its capital are still intense. Not only because of 7.8 earthquakes over the past month but because 17 years is a long time in any place and Auckland and Wellington are like chalk and cheese. One contains our closest friends, the other is home to family and my new partner. One is warm, wet and cloudy while the other has intense sunshine but is cooler. One is where we had to be, the other is where we wanted to be. It was a bi ..read more

It’s still early days and the highs and lows of relocating from this country’s largest city to its capital are still intense. Not only because of 7.8 earthquakes over the past month but because 17 years is a long time in any place and Auckland and Wellington are like chalk and cheese. One contains our closest friends, the other is home to family and my new partner. One is warm, wet and cloudy while the other has intense sunshine but is cooler. One is where we had to be, the other is where we wanted to be. It was a big decision to move but it was the easiest big decision I have ever m ..read more

Tune in to RNZ National with Jesse Mulligan and yours truly this afternoon (Friday 16 December) 3.15pm Champagne… Its name comes from Latin, its first entrepreneurs were German and up to half of its production exploded, due to high pressure  and flimsy glass in the 18th Century. Champagne. If its name brings special occasions and high price tags to mind, it wasn’t always so. In the early 1700s, champagne with bubbles was considered inferior to the still wines of the Champagne region (the capital letter denotes the region while the lower case is the generic name of ..read more