Wine-ing Pool Boy goes South!

Having sampled Decanter 2025 Wine Award winners from Craggy Range, Trinity Hill and Church Road, it was time to see how the best South Island Reds were doing, in particular, McArthur Ridge and Amisfield.  Read more

The House of Pania's blogger checks out Craggy Range for a wine tasting.
Back to blogging after a long break with the Hawke's Bay vintage now in the tank. A very good one as it has turned out, especially for the Reds, including hard to please, Cabernet Sauvignon.  Read more

The Home of the Big Reds

Bernard and I (the House of Pania pool boy) had agreed we would follow up earlier cellar door visits by going to Te Mata Estate Winery, and the recent release of Coleraine and other of their 2023 wines prompted today's visit.  Read more

For this visit and tasting, my friend Bernard Carpinter was happy to join me. He is a Bordeaux lover too, but unlike me, he drinks Whites as well. We started off as a $20 pp tasting but soon expanded that to $35 equivalent and more again. All the while we had two large glass jars in front of us each containing a mix of gravel soil and stones typical of the terroir at Bridge Pa Triangle and Gimblett.  Read more

For some time now Church Road has made excellent Reds and Whites mostly from its vineyards in the Gimblett Gravels and the Bridge Pa Triangle.  It is interesting to note that vines were planted at Church Road Winery in 1897, and the winery became known as a pioneer of Bordeaux-style red wines in New Zealand.  Read more

The cellar door is up the driveway from the winery buildings and is in the same building as the restaurant. On offer are guided and self-guided tastings, one $20 and the other $15. The wines change from time to time, for self-guided we chose a fizz ( Festival, $23, fun, and unpretentious) and three Reds which all sell for $29. The first a 2023 Syrah was a bit average and probably needed more time.  Read more

For the wine tasting, we had 2 whites and 4 reds. I added a fifth red, being the flagship Homage.

The Tourigas was a red fortified wine that tasted just as good as you would expect from a grape which is one of the major varieties used to make Port. Trinity Hill offers the grape in three forms.  Read more

Last Sunday, with my House of Pania Bnb wine-ing pool boy hat on, I visited Clearview Estate which lies just north of Te Awanga on the coast road to the base of the Cape Kidnappers cliffs. It sits on very old river gravels thought to have come from as far away as the Mohaka River. As with most Hawke's Bay vineyards, there will be ash and pumice layers from the Lake Taupo eruptions centuries ago.  Read more

In addition to cleaning the pool, I am the breakfast chef at the House of Pania Bnb which is perched on the Napier Bluff Hill clifftop. I have another task which is to blog about Hawke's Bay wine. Bordeaux style of wine is my favourite, French (I have a small cellar) and Hawke's Bay's most of all. So I will concentrate on these, the French as I drink it and as the year's en primeur arrives, and the Hawke's Bays' as each vintage unfolds.  Read more