Isabel Gilbert Palmer interviews Daniel Brennan, an American who has settled in New Zealand and is working to do something different with wines in Hawkes Bay. His advice to anyone taking a step towards a winemaking career is to be ready to work hard and not make much money for a very long time. He says its important to work with people who have the same mindset as yours and are passionate. Here is his story. Lets begin with a timeline Dan. What year did you come to New Zealand and specifically why? 2008 to study Wine Science at the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) in Hawkes Bay. Where do you live and from where did you come from originally ? I live in Hawkes Bay. I am New York-born, and grew up in Philadelphia in a Sicilian-Irish family. What brought you from the East Coast of USA not exactly known for wine growing to the East Coast of New Zealand and Hawkes Bay, well known for it? I can answer that partly with a question for you. Do you think tasting a wine … [Read more...]
Guillaume Thomas (Maison Noir): A French harvest nomad follows his dream in New Zealand
Isabel Gilbert Palmer interviews a French man who has settled in Havenlock North, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand and who has just started to produce wine under the Maison Noir label. Like many in the food and wine world, he took a long time to find out what he wanted to do in life and after a life in music decided to work in the wine industry, studying winemaking and wine marketing and then becoming a harvest nomad to travel around the world. He finally settled in New Zealand, the place where he met his wife and had a daughter. Guillaume as the first New New Zealander in this series lets begin with.. So where are you from originally ? I was born and spent my childhood in a very small French village,there were only 12 homes, in La Vrignais in the Aigrefeuille-sur Maine, the Loire-Atlantique department of western France, in fact near the city of Nantes on the Atlantic coast, in Brittany. Its perhaps an assumption to say that because you were born in a historical wine growing … [Read more...]
Living in the Antipodes: New world wines, new New Zealanders and the new guard
History tells us that in the early 1800’s, French Missionaries, Brothers from the Order of Saint Mary, at the direction of France’s Pope Gregory XV1 in Lyon set sail for Nouvelle Zealandia, or Aotearoa (Land of the Long White Cloud) armed with their bibles, sacramental robes, rituals and seedling grape vines. Their destination, a collection of sparsely inhabited islands, (except for its indigenous race who named them) in the South Pacific. Here, these pioneering Marist Brothers chose Hawkes Bay, a Province in the North Island of their adopted country consisting of 1.4 million hectares on 350km of Pacific Ocean coastline, to settle. An eastern sea board and famous for being the first country in the world to see the sun rise on every new day, it climbs from sea level to several hundred metres inland to the Southern Hemisphere. Warm north-facing hillsides, its natural river valleys and terraces, offered them then and winemakers now a diversity of low vigour vineyard sites … [Read more...]
Jake Westacott: The gypsy chef who is always on the road
I am speaking to you in Maine not Los Angeles, what are you doing there? I'm here to organise a new section of an existing kitchen with its open faced wood fired pizza oven, cooking and teaching staff how to use it. Meanwhile having fun experimenting with it between house orders and teaching. I mastered Montreal style bagels last week. So its not just about you cheffing then, what is involved in your teaching? It is fundamentally Neapolitan Pizza Making 101 but the basics are all about working with wood fire and heat. How to be organised before the cooking even begins, knowing your wood, firing the oven, watching and understanding the temperature. Then we get to dough making, the character of flour, yeast. It is very hands on experiential learning and then finally it is about shaping pizzas, creating sauces, choosing toppings and bread making. I have a bit of a flour fetish too. We used Italian flour until I discovered Canadian flour in Toronto which became my … [Read more...]
Delphine Lippens – from Brussels to Los Angeles: ‘Working with clay was never part of my plan’
An illuminating discussion with Belgian-born, longtime Los Angeles resident Delphine Lippens, currently a successful ceramicist. We met in February at her studio, proudly located in South Central Los Angeles. Artisan Block Los Angeles (A B.L.A) is a collective of artists, artisans and makers located in one single block in this area of the city. Lippens created Humble Ceramics in 2010 and what you see today is the evolution of an exploration in clay. Delphine where are you from originally? Brussels but I came to live in Los Angeles, in 1982. when I was almost 13. Have you lived in California ever since? Yes primarily but I also spent time and years going to and fro from Europe when I was a little older. So where does Humble Ceramics begin? I am sitting with you in a vast warehouse surrounded by ceramic filled shelves in all degrees of readiness. How did you get to be here? Working with clay was never part of my “plan”. So this is a very unexpected evolution. After … [Read more...]
New contributor for Food and Wine Gazette: A reader writer
“Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change" - Heraclitus I have been a reader as long as I can remember. Encouraged I believe by my father, who smuggled me into the local library on Adults only nights. There I was, a five-year-old scurrying into the children’s corner and roaming the shelves alone and in silence. Despite the rules, Mrs Beech, the librarian, always stamped my books with a slight smile part privy to the secret. Since then I have had this thing with books and libraries, books shops and news stands. You could say it is a fixation and an ongoing obsession with words and what happens when they are strung together. I chase words not only in the usual places but on wrappers, signs, tickets, on buildings, hoardings, travel brochures, DIY pamphlets, online blogs, credits in movies, labels, packets, where to them words is limitless and their meanings unequaled. It doesn't take much leap of imagination to see that quite possibly reading a lot can lead to writing a … [Read more...]