FLYING HIGH

Perhaps you’ve heard about the scam in which you are telephoned and told you have won a delicious hamper of food in a raffle you hadn’t entered? The voice on the end of the phone says “Well, someone else must have bought the ticket under your name. Just come around to Number 1 Dreamland Avenue and you can collect your prize”. While you’ve gone your house is done over by burglars who were parked in a car across the street, waiting for you to leave.

Well, a few weeks back we had an experience a bit like that. Relax! We are not saying all our wine was taken and there is nothing left for you to buy! What happened was we received a phone call to say that we had won first prize in a competition we hadn’t entered!

We had earlier sold some Pegasus Bay 2002 Pinot Noir to both Air New Zealand and Qantas to serve in Business and First Class. It turns out that Air NZ entered this wine in a competition in London that was to evaluate wines served on airlines from around the globe. Our Pinot beat off all other comers to be judged the best red wine in the sky. Weep, producers of cabernet, merlot, syrah and all other reds. How does it feel to have become top of the mile high club? We are over the moon. We hope you have some bottles tucked up in your cellar.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK. WHAT A HELLEVA (GOOD) TOWN

Whichever way you look at it you have to agree with the song that “New York is a helleva town”. It’s undoubtedly the hub of the Americas and must surely be amongst the half dozen most important cities in the world. It’s brash, but sophisticated and oozing with coin.

New Yorkers want and expect the best and while they are prepared to pay for it they certainly demand value for money. Enter the New York Wine Experience. This annual event is run by the prestigious Wine Spectator Magazine and is held over a weekend in the Big Apple. They select only 200 wines from around the globe that are available for tasting by the media, wine professionals and the general public. With literally millions of different wines to choose from, you can imagine the selection process has to be very tough and they base it solely on the quality of wines.

It's all go at the New York Wine Experience. Matthew Donaldosn with our US Importers and Distributers. From left: John Arden, Mike Conroy, Matthew, Neil Empson (who was named US Wine Importer of the year)

We were delighted to be asked to show one of our Pinot Noirs for the second time in 3 years, at this event last November. Because Edward Donaldson, who usually does our international marketing, was busy preparing for a little function (see over), it was left to his older, winemaking brother, Matthew, to cross the Pacific and to take the Flying Horse to the event. What was it like? “It was truly amazing”, he reported, “It was very well organised and just packed with wine connoisseurs and enthusiasts. What’s more, I had a really great time”. It’s a tough life, but someone has to do it!

BRIDLING PEGASUS

We never were great language scholars, but if you’re interested in international wines it is handy to know a little French. France produces the odd drop or two and over the years it has gained more than a modest reputation for its top wines. Hence, we can occasionally be caught thumbing through a French dictionary.

We were amusing ourselves in such a way one day when we came across the French verb brider, which means to bridle a horse. The bridle is la bride. Now where do you think the English word bride comes from and what do you think terms like bridle party actually mean? If you think it might have something to do with putting a halter on a horse or a person, then we won’t say you’re wrong. While the word halter has special significance with regard to a horse, we are not suggesting it should be applied to a bride.

Now, last November, Pegasus had a special bridling party when marketing manager Edward Donaldson and restaurant manager Belinda Keys got hitched. For a couple of days cold wind and rain had gusted from the south making all of us nervous as the wedding service was supposed to be held outdoors. Just before the ceremony was about to start it became still, the clouds parted, the sun shone and the bees began to buzz. It seemed like magic. Everyone had a great time and there was much horsing around.

All this raises another point. If the bridle party helps put a bridle on the bride, where does the term groomsman come from and what is he supposed to do? Keep up that grooming and stroking Ed!

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED THE OTHER DAY

Recently we had a telephone call to ask if it would be all right for Basil Fawlty (alias John Cleese) to visit our winery. We were keen to meet him as we are long time fans of this top notch British comedian, who created such side splitting classics as Fawlty Towers, A Fish Called Wanda and Monty Python. He was very interested in trying our range of wines and wanted to have lunch at the Pegasus Bay restaurant.

It's not a funny matter. Ivan Donaldson explains some of the finer points of Pegasus Bay wines to John Cleese

We can report that he is not only tall in stature, but he is short on blowing his own trumpet. John was charming, modest and perhaps even a little self effacing. More importantly he is seriously interested in wine and has even done a TV series on vineyards, wineries and wine, called Wine for the Confused. He thus knows his onions, or rather his wines, and seemed to be more than suitably impressed. “I’m happy to do this”, he said as he signed a couple of special bottles of Pegasus Bay wines to be auctioned in aid of medical research, “as I have just been under the surgeon’s knife”. From his cheerful grin we could tell the outcome was happy rather than deadly serious.

WINTER WINING (AND DINING)

The lazy hazy days of summer are gone and we pass into autumn and winter. Don’t fret, but rather celebrate. While summer weather is great, heat can be a bit distracting when it comes to wine and food. There is nothing like a bit of cold weather to stimulate the appetite and whet the taste buds. The Pegasus Bay Tasting Room and Restaurant will be open every day. Just phone us on 03 3146 869 ext 1 if you want to book for lunch. We can assure you of a warm welcome and the food is not half bad either. The menu changes regularly and features fresh seasonal produce, quite a bit of it from our own gardens. Come to enjoy.

Scott Willis, our talented and friendly Restaurant Manager will ensure you a warm welcome.

Heike Bauer, who is in charge of the Tasting Room, has a great knowledge of international wines.

FROM THE PRESCRIPTION PAD

I guess when you are in the health business you tend to take certain things as a given. Thus, you would expect that unless someone lives on an extraterrestrial planet they will have heard that being older, having high blood pressure and having a high level of blood fats, such as might occur in diabetes, tends to cause health problems, including heart attacks. Most people have also heard that a moderate intake of alcohol, particularly in the form of wine, may be good for your heart. There are several recent medical publications which tie some of these things together and support the notion that the odd tipple might be good for you. Just this year researchers from Boston reported that in patients aged 65 and older, the rate of heart attacks and coronary death was reduced in mild to moderate drinkers, with the lowest risk being in those who consumed 14 or more drinks a week. According to other researchers alcohol’s protective effective effect also occurs if you are diabetic and the French have now published results showing a reduced death rate in hypertensives who drink moderate amounts of wine, compared with abstainers who have similar high blood pressure. Heart attacks are caused by arteries which become blocked. Simplistically it’s a bit like having rust in the pipes. Arteries travel all through your body so it is not surprising that they also clog up in other places. After the heart, the next most common place for this to occur is in the brain, resulting in a stroke. The Boston group of researchers mentioned above has now also shown that strokes caused by such vascular blockages are less likely to occur in those drinking red wine, but not other alcoholic beverages.

Some of these risk factors for such arterial disease tend to run together. In other words, they often occur in the same person. Abnormal blood fats, high blood pressure and a tendency to diabetes are more likely to occur if you are overweight, particularly around the mid-riff. This unfortunate combination of features has a fancy medical name. It’s called the metabolic syndrome. There is now good medical evidence that, not only is wine associated with a better health outcome if you have these various individual features in isolation, but it helps in preventing the development of the metabolic syndrome. Should you have this condition wine may also help to control it. In fact, earlier this year a Spanish group showed that rats which normally become obese when fed on a high fat diet, were slimmer if they were given red wine at the same time.

While having a vascular mishap, such as a heart attack or stroke, is the number one reason for you to pay a visit to the undertaker, cancer is number two. Although there are good studies showing that moderate wine consumption is associated with a generally reduced incidence of cancer, there has been a question mark about alcohol being associated with certain specific types of cancerous growths, namely those of the mouth and breast. Research has just been published showing that while oral cancer is increased in spirit drinkers, wine has no such effect and this year the French and Finns surveyed women for breast cancer and could not find any association with wine drinking. Over all it thus seems that wine in moderation has a positive benefit in cancer prevention.

Coming right out of the left field are reports that moderate consumption of wine may protect against macular degeneration, which is the leading cause of visual loss in the elderly and results from damage to the retina. Who would have thought it? The retina, however, is really an extension of the brain and consists of a mass of specialised nerve cells. Having a neurological background, this is something I am very interested in. Last year the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a large study showing, not only that elderly women who are moderate drinkers perform better on mental function tests than teetotallers, but that when they were followed up over a period of years, their cognitive function (ability to think, to those not in the brain trade) deteriorated less rapidly than that of non-drinkers. This helps confirm similar findings in other studies. At the other end of the age scale it has been reported that lower suicide rates in teenagers and young adults in Europe are associated with higher per capita consumption of wine in the general population as compared with beer and spirits. There are a number of other scientific reports published recently showing that wine drinkers have higher IQ, better education and better dietary and exercise habits than beer and spirit drinkers. Therein lies a problem. Do wine drinkers have better mental and bodily health because they are more intelligent and careful with themselves, or is it that the wine is having a beneficial effect? Which is the cart and which is the horse? At the moment this is unresolved.

There is considerable theoretical scientific work to suggest that the colouring matter and tannins in wine, which are collectively called phenolic compounds, are strong anti-oxidants and minimise the damaging effect of harmful processes in the body, including those underlying vascular disease and cancer. There has been a lot of effort put into trying to identify these complex naturally occurring compounds and some bright sparks have even suggested putting them into powder or tablet form so you can have the full benefit without having to put up with that nasty alcohol stuff. To me it sounds like proposing it would be better for all children to be conceived by embryo transplantation to get rid of the horrible sex! Well, it just so happens that a few months back some Italian scientists published scientific evidence showing if you took the alcohol out of wine such phenolic compounds were not only absorbed more poorly by the gut, but they weren’t so easily broken down into other secondary substances which are believed to be equally, if not more, beneficial. These scientists proposed that both the alcohol and the phenolic compounds contributed to the likely beneficial effects of wine. Thank goodness for that! Pour me another glass of pinot noir while I rest back in my chair and get over the shock of contemplating a tablet and cheese evening!

Cheers, Ivan Donaldson