The big First Matakana Wine Festival

Well, the big day is just 4 days from now for our first real large NZ wine tasting event for Hawks Nest. It is all day this Sunday -March 2nd. It should be a cool day and I will be looking for many of my NZ friends to show up. We will have a good number of roving wine sellers who will stroll around the event grounds with bottles of our wine to offer samples or glasses. We also are setting up a pretty good both display. I will be sure to post some photos after Sun!!!

We also have just put up a new roadside sign for our Vineyard. We don't have cellar selling so we have worked out a deal with the Vintry in Matakana Village. Nicki Haller, who owns that neat wine bar, is now offering all comers samples and glasses or even bottles to take away of our wine. This means when you next visit Matakana you can sample our wine at the Vintry any day--rain or shine.
Here is a photo of the new sign. Note a person can even order our wine on line now via Nicki's neat web site. (maybe one day when we grow up we will have our own website for Hawks Nest as we do have the domain name reserved still)

The other photo shows that we have the grapes all tucked into our side netting and ready to safely ripen with minimun "lunching" by the birds!! More blogging will now be after our wine festival--we are hoping for cool but dry weather so the attendees will want some good red wines--e.g. Hawks Nest.

Dr Jim and Miss Sandra
PS If you are reading this in Nashville, sorry that you will miss the Festival here this weekend. You can now get the latest edition of the Nashville Wine Press at most liquor stores there in Nashville. The cover features Mario Andretti but there is a little article inside about me and our ventures into the wine business. So, if you see the current edition do check us out AND be sure to also get some of our newly released 06 Hawks Nest Orchard Block Red. It is tasting now with a bit of age