Puriri Hills will be a featured wine at Burger Bach, a new New Zealand themed restaurant group started this month with its first location in Carytown,  Richmond, Virginia.  Burger Bach will offer the natural beef, lamb, and mussels of New Zealand, along with our wines, in a casual gastro-pub setting.

Belated holiday greetings from Puriri Hills.  We spent Christmas in shaky Christchurch, where we experienced the latest round of 5-6 strength earthquakes.  Then back to the vineyard for family visits…hence the lateness of this message.

The vineyard is pristine, despite a very rainy December.  Flowering spread over a long period, with cabernet franc quite early and carmenere and cab sav quite late.  Fruit set was quite good.  The sheep have done the leaf plucking.  Fruit thinning is next, now that bunch closure is upon us.    It has been a cloudy wet La Nina year, and we are ready for some summer warmth and dry weather.  Netting will follow veraison…sometime in February.  Vintage is likely to spread over the whole of April since fruit set was so disparate.

 We hope to ship our 08′s to the US and Australia in the next few months, so that everyone can try this fabulous vintage.

The Women Chefs & Restauranteurs organization are holding their annual World Fare: Street Food Festival, Sunday October 3rd at Willow Restaurant in Arlington, VA.  Puriri Hills is one of 5 woman-run vineyards in the world who are featured at this event, along with the top women chefs and restauranteurs of the Washington DC area.

We are featuring your 2004 Estate and 2006 Reserve at the Washington, D C. International Wine and Food Festival this weekend (Feb. 11 -12 2011).

Restaurateurs, shop owners and consumers have been returning to our table over and over again to have more of your wine!  You have made many new friends of the winery!  We all wish you were here!!!

It is so refreshing to see the look of pleasant surprise on the faces of wine lovers here after trying your wines for the first time!

Posted by Gray Mosby, Nice Legs

Fred and Judy at Puriri Hills

Frederic Ardouin, formerly winemaker at Chateau Latour and today manager and winemaker at Chateau Du Tertre and Chateau Giscours in Margaux and Caiarossa in Tuscany, stayed with us at Puriri Hills last week.  He was most impressed with barrel tastings of our cabernet sauvignon and merlot and suggested a Left Bank blend for Puriri Hills . . . interesting idea.  We will look at this!

Puriri Hills appears on many of the Washington DC area’s most prestigious wine lists – including The Inn at Little Washington, 2941, Michel, Citronelle, Centrale, Vidalia, Corduroy, Zola, Proof, Willow, Eventide.

View the full list of US restaurants and wine shops stocking Puriri Hills wines…

Breakfast at Michel Richard’s swanky new bistro, Michel (at the Ritz Carlton, Tysons Corner) today.

Judy inspects the glass enclosed wine cellar gracefully displaying Puriri Hills wines.

Lorenc Dudas and Matthias Gaertner of Wein-residenz  (Achenbachstr 72, Dusseldorf 40237, Germany) have been appointed Puriri Hills’ agent for Europe.  Their first shipment is in transit to Germany now and will include wines from our 2006, 2007 and 2008 vintages.  Matthias, who became a collector of Puriri Hills when he lived in Australia, has now relocated to Berlin.   He will be posting European events featuring Puriri Hills on this website in both English and German.  Contact Wein-residenz at telephone: +49 211 876 33 595  or email: lorenc.dudas@wein-residenz.de.