Strictly one bottle only per customer We are the only retail store in the country with an allocation of Jenny Dobson's outstanding dry Fiano... 2022 Jenny Dobson Florence Fiano RRP $38.99 Buy here  We were originally allocated 12 bottles only for the entire year and within a week of purchasing them, we sold out, just prior to the cyclone. Winemaker Jenny Dobson has released another 12 bottles to us, but that’s it. The Bush Hawk vineyard in Ngatarawa where these grapes grow did survive the inclement weather intact, but volumes are likely to be down next year. Dobson and we are big fans...

Beaujolais comes in many different shapes and sizes from light, fruity and simple to serious weighty wines made from sunny sites on south facing hillsides. If your only experience of Beaujolais is nouveau, please don't give up just yet - read on and perhaps buy one or both of these exceptional new wines that shine a totally different light on a great French classic. It's called Beaujolais and it has nothing to do with light bodied nouveau styles that are rushed out to market in a gimmicky fashion in November each year.  These wines are serious.  These two Beaujolais are...

We’re all secretly searching for it aren’t we. You know… that whisky that costs about 60 odd bucks and somehow punches way above its weight, or speaks to you on a level that you only usually find in top-flight whiskies. Track down that dram and you’re done. You can check out of the whisky rat race and retire a happy chappy…I’m still searching to be honest, but a few at our affordable whisky tasting last month would certainly fill the gap whilst the search continues.This was a lineup of nine affordable, sherry influenced drams spanning about $50 to $100.Did they...

It’s nice to think that we’re currently in a bit of a beer boom - at the epicentre of a swirling explosion of new styles and ingenious approaches to brewing. The truth, however, is that most of what we see today has actually been done before.Today’s beer, Valkyrie, is a nice case in point. This is a German style amber made by the American outfit Enegren, who specialise in Germanic lager-like brews.It’s a nice twist on the current theme for shifts to lighter styles, as its roots are found in the indigenous German altbier - which itself was very much...

We’ve been running with a bit of a Californian theme of late and so I thought we may as well keep rolling on, after all, California knows how to party!We looked at Anchor’s steam beer a few weeks back - one of the many examples of a beers made using a mash up of techniques. In this case, a fermentation using lager yeast, but at hot temperatures more commonly associated with ale yeast.As far as I can glean, today’s beer is a lager made as a lager, but, on another note, it offers a quick ABCDE on the topic of...