Birthday Wine

Birthdays call for extravagant, memorable wines. They do not, unfortunately, call for note taking in amongst the fun and frivolity. Luckily I had the willpower and foresight to save a little of the Pyramid Valley Growers Collection Orton Vineyard Hawke's Bay Gewurztraminer 2007 to try just now.

If you're not familiar with Pyramid Valley and their dedication to small family blocks around the country through their 'growers collection' then I would recommend them to all.

Mike and Claudia Weersing have preserved little pieces of history by making wines from tiny family blocks that would otherwise go into making up the juice from contract fruit (or not get made at all).

The first and last vintage of this Gewurztraminer, the reasons for which are best explained by the back label which reads:-

In memorium: this unique acre of 30 year old vines was one of New Zealand's first plantings of Gewurztraminer. Once proudly tended by our friends John Orton and Kerrie Cleverdon, this parcel was summarily ripped out by new owners, who deemed so small a block "impractical". We have bottled this wine unclarified, undiminished, as testament to the wisdom of old vines

Not a bad drop to mark 30, odd, years.

Hazy, unfiltered saffron gold. Sunshine and spice. 14.5% but carries it well (as an older dame should). Stonefruit salad and ham hock (sounds weird but very yummy, imagine that great 70's flavour comination of ham and pineapple and you're almost there). Bone dry, so the spicy caraway and ginger notes dominate the palate along with lavender and lime and it all ends up generous and powerful and suggestive which makes me a little bit sad...
A 6 glass wine (how many glasses are we getting out of a bottle these days?)