BACCHANALIAN PARADISE

Today we worked for our lunch, not lots, but enough to get a fainter shimmer of perspiration on our brow and a dusty butt.

We were asked to come join in the harvest of one of the Wairarapa's top pinot noir vineyards. Wycroft. The owner and Bon Vivant is Lawrie Bryant. There were a few other guests of the harvest as well but in the interests of national security all names will remain anonymous.
Anyway the day was picture perfect , autumn sunshine, great company and a superb autumnal lunch of cold cuts, pies, pickles and bread and salad. And of course a drop of the hosts best.

Wycroft is seen and enjoyed in such fine eateries as Antoines and Boulcott St Bistro.
We could go on about how good it is , but to our untrained palate it's just bloody yum.

One of the things that Lawrie has crafted, which shows he is a man who thinks hard about how to reduce the impact of dirty and difficult work, is the slidy vine chair pictured above. It alleviates the need to bend over or scrabble along on your derriere as you clip the grapes from the low hanging vines.

But the highlight of the day was meeting a 95 year old airforce veteran. Sprightly he was, thoroughly entertaining, a true gentleman and a one our nations treasures. And he helped pick grapes along with us young 'uns. We could have listened to his tales for hours.

We will remember the Wycroft 2009 vintage, and the privilege of meeting a great New Zealand hero for many years to come.

PURE DINING PLEASURE

There are good restaurants and then there is sublime dining.

This afternoon we feasted at Antoines in Parnell.

We adore offal. Sweetbreads, kidneys, hearts, brains, oxtails and ox tongue are simply gastronomic nirvana to us.

And Tony Astle is not scared of offal. He is the master of turning the exotic parts of fauna, often spurned by an uneducated public, into mouth melting delights.

When we were small and dad killed a "mutton" which was normally a two tooth wether, more often than not the neighbours got the chops and roasts and we got the liver, hearts and sweetbreads (if it was a lamb) So we grew up thinking that they were the prized bits.

The experience of dining at Antoines starts at the door. You knock, and the waiter opens the door and you are seated. At once you feel very special and privileged.

So at todays lunch we started with a Nautilus Sauvignon Blanc and 6 Bluff oysters encased in a feather light tempura.

Our good mate had oysters drenched in a cream champagne sauce.

The next dish was a favourite of ours - tripe in a cream peppercorn sauce and one of the signature dishes of this iconic restaurant.

It was sublime, a gentle whiff of sheep, layered with the aromatic green peppercorns.

Then for main we had an extraordinarily rich ox tongue, with sweetbreads, baby sweet onions encased in a rich buttery fall apart pastry. It was accompanied by a lightly oaked Selaks Founders Sauvignon.

Dessert was a bread and butter pudding dressed up as a flouncy creamy Cinderella with shiny shoes of strawberries . It was matched with a stunning De Bortoli semillon.

Antoines remains one of our favourite restaurants in New Zealand.

It is elegant and a touch arrogant, as it should be. And the waiter was as cute as waiters can be.
And the afternoon was all we hoped it would be.