Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Well, Sandra and I are back into the full swing of NZ summer. Daylight at 6 and not dark until nine in the eve is really nice for Mid Jan. We are "all go" at Hawks Nest Vineyard and the grapes are growing rapidly. We have completed the leaf plucking as well have trimed off the excess vine shoots so now the vines all look nice a tidy and you can see in the photo I took yesterday from the front of our vineyard by the roadside. Now the long summer sun can hit directly on the growing grapes and the energy of the vines will go into growing good full bunches and not just of shooting off more excess vines. We look to have about 8 tons of total grapes this harvest with about 5 tons of Cab Franc and 3 tons of Malbac. The Malbec are growing a bit slower with fewer bunches this year but all in all Jeremy, our manager, is pleased with the crop to date. REmember we are an orchard as well and we are just about sold out of our avocados. We start selling avos from our honesty stall about mid-Nov and usually run out by mid Jan. We have a better crop this year and will be selling for about another two weeks it seems. We sell all by the roadside in our honesty stall. After hearing of the freeze in Calif two weeks ago I sure wish we could ship off some of ours to the states. We take and eat all the non selling fruit (that which is small or blimished) They are still good inside and we are "pigging out" on fresh avos just now. There is no good way to keep them so just munch away on them!!!

We live on the coast and like to be a bit of kayaking out along the coast here in Matakana. Here is a shot from this weekend showing a nice relaxing paddler enjoying the calm waters just offshore!!!!!!! (actually someone sent this to me and it MUST be a doctored photo) Anyway, Sandra has now sworn off of Sea Kayaking it seems after we got this via email!!!!

We are off the our local cinema tonight. That is the big news this summer in little Matakana. We how have a real live "walk in" movie theater that shows first run movies. We are going to see "the Queen" and hear it is very good. Before this week we had to go 45 minutes to go to a movie and thus rented DVD's mostly. NOw we have a three screen new state of the art cinema and will really love that I am sure. Here in NZ you can take wine into the movies--very civilized to say the least. Attached to the movie lobby is the new Matakana Wine Centre that is serving out wines by the glass. It is pretty cool to have some nibbles and a bottle or glass wine and take them all into the theatre to enjoy the show!!!

More soon and sorry that we are having so much summer fun here in NZ.


DR JIm and Sandra --loving being downunder in Jan.