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On Saturday night, travelling companions Mel Brown, David Brookes and I popped into a natural wine bar pop-up First Date at Cupple Coffee in Hastings, Hawkes Bay. This was billed as Hawke’s Bay’s first natural wine bar event, and so we were really keen to check it out.<\/p>\n
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Food was from Restaurant Chimera, who are Auckland based but specialise in pop-up events. It was really good, although they’d run out of a few things by 7.30 pm.<\/p>\n
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The wines were a mix of natural things from Hawke’s Bay, plus some other Kiwi naturals, plus some international references. We drank really well. New Zealand needs a stronger natural\/authentic wine scene, and it’s good to see it emerging.<\/p>\n
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This Pinot Gris is from Amy Farnsworth, and it’s made with no added sulphites. It’s a skin contact wine and it’s delicious and expressive. Organic.<\/p>\n
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The Huntress is made by Janine Rickards, winemaker at Urlar in Wellington Wine Country. Janine likes to hunt. This, her Huntress 2018 \u2018Waikura\u2019 Ros\u00e9, is a relatively dark wine with lots of intense fruit. Lots of colour from whole-cluster ferment. Impressive and food compatible.<\/p>\n
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Halcyon Days: a collaborative effort from husband and wife team Amy Hopkinson-Styles and Ollie Styles. Somewhat coloured, cloudy ros\u00e9 style with lots of perfume, grainy intensity and some structure. Delicious stuff.<\/p>\n
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This needs little introduction: so intensely juicy, grainy and smashable with incredible fruit intensity. Really lovely stuff.<\/p>\n
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This was being sold below retail. It’s very approachable and elegant. My note<\/p>\n
Pyramid Valley Vineyards Earth Smoke Pinot Noir 2015 North Canterbury, New Zealand<\/strong> <\/p>\n ‘Minus 220’ refers to the fact that theres no E220 (sulfur dioxide) added. From Hayden Penny of the Supernatural Wine Co, this is fabulous. My note:<\/p>\n Supernatural Skin Fermented Sauvignon Blanc Minus 220 2018 Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand<\/strong> <\/p>\n Mel and Brookesy. Top travelling companions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Saturday night, travelling companions Mel Brown, David Brookes and I popped into a natural wine bar pop-up First Date at Cupple Coffee in Hastings, Hawkes Bay. This was billed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,9],"tags":[377,352],"class_list":["post-22733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-wine","category-new-zealand","tag-natural-wine","tag-new-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22733"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22746,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22733\/revisions\/22746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSweet, ripe and textured with silky, fine strawberry and red cherry fruit. Such a seamless wine with fine grained structure and some herby notes. Lovely acid line, too. Very subtle green characters in the background bring out the fine fruitiness. 94\/100<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/IMG_5734-500x375.jpg\")
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\nThis has no added sulphites, and displays lovely perfumed melon and apricot fruit with some spice, and textured pear and citrus fruit. So lovely. 93\/100<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/IMG_5737-500x375.jpg\")
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