Now Very Pregnant Sommelier

And it's mighty hard to taste anything properly!

I've a nose like a beagle but I'm so uncertain of my palate and I'm sipping and spitting which is the preferred, professional mode of tasting but has a certain austerity to it.

I'm about to launch in to writing a new wine list to see my place through winter and my maternity leave so there'll be a necessity for wine notes. But wine notes of what colour? And reliable?

More questions than answers. I've been told Jancis completed her Master of Wine (complete with blind tasting) whilst pregnant.... I'm not sure of the veracity of this but if so......

Coopers Creek 'The Pointer' Pinot Gris 2008

I'm not a fan, really, of Gris. I keep trying to find something redeeming in it's inocuous flavours. And failing.

But I'd always thought this a cut above the usual. Weighty enough without the startling alcohol that smells like a headache in a glass. Only just off dry. Eschewing the residual sugar levels that many others use to mask poor fruit or to provide interest...

I'm rather damning with faint praise here. And as my mother says
"if you have nothing nice to say then you shouldn't say anything at all"

But the Coopers Creek Pointer is a decent Pinot Gris. It's got that whiff of pear drops and quite a bit of baking spice thrown in. It likes food. A red duck curry helped it to sing and show off its texture and fruit sweetness. a 2 glass wine

Worrying About Wine

It seems when the wine is gone for the drinking I worry about it staying gone. Most notably I'm bothered by the city planning in Nu Zillund and the recommendation that we continually free up land at the edge of the city. Apparently this is the answer to our over-inflated, un-affordable housing market.

Which has nothing to do with wine. Except it does.

Kumeu is a small but powerful wine region on the western skirts of Auckland. It's production including the excellent Chardonnay of Kumeu River, amongst other things. But if our city planners have thehance of their way Kumeu will no longer be at the edge of the city but part of a scraped earth 'sub-division'.

Or worse (or better I imagine it's how you look at it) it will have to sidle up to yet another mall.

Harder Than I Thought

to be a pregnant Sommelier.

And harder than I thought to keep writing about wine when it's practically off limits. The clinical tasting of wine, but missing out on the enjoyable drinking of wine is not for me,

it seems.

So what to do? The interest does not abate but I've enjoyed writing about specific wines on my terms, with my voice, a peculiar paean to my palate. Selfish-ish.

There's a whole world of wine outside of the drinking and musing but what to add to the fierce intellects and historical sagacity?

And will it be as much fun? As the drinking.....