Tuesday 16 December 2008

The 5 Star Decanter Award Winning Wine, Spy Valley Pinot Noir 2007 has arrived!

We have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the 2007 vintage of Spy Valley Pinot Noir from Malborough, New Zealand and we are pleased to announce that it has now arrived!

Decanter Magazine recently awarded this wine 5 stars describing is as rich with ripe cherry, layered fruit. Full, round, concentrated style, beautiful balance, lifted structure. Sweet, long finish. Delicious. Drink from 2008.

It was also described as a Best Buy and is incredible value at £11.45.
Click here for information and to purchase >>

Friday 12 December 2008

A very interesting article about New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc...Read on!

Source: Scotland on Sunday (Spectrum) 2nd November 2008
Writer: Will Lyons (Louis Roederer UK Regional Wine Writer of the Year 2008)

Cloudy Bay redefined the taste of sauvignon blanc – but can it weather the storm produced by New Zealand's burgeoning competition?

Please feel free to click on the following link to read this article .... http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/wine/Cloudy-Bay-redefined-the-taste.4650038.jp (please remember to click back to our site though!)

In this article he explains how New Zealand has not only become the new epicentre for premium sauvignon blanc but that recently, plantings of chardonnay, pinot noir, pinot gris and syrah have all shone, producing an elegant, Old World-style sophistication. He goes on to mention that Staete Landt wines (which we have just received!), in particular, are shining through. He writes:

The wines of Staete Landt vineyard have only just found its way to the UK. Situated in Rapaura, it produces a wine of subtlety, purity and complexity.

2007 Sauvignon Blanc, Staete Landt, Marlborough, New Zealand - A real find. The nose has all the hallmarks of New Zealand sauvignon: mango, papaya and passion fruit with a grassy, mineral character. The acidity and balance are superb – a class act.

2006 Chardonnay, Staete Landt, Marlborough, New Zealand - This is one of the best chardonnays from New Zealand. A delightful creamy, almond character on the nose with notes of nectarine. It's bone dry and has an intense, crisp burgundian feel. Outstanding.

As you will have noticed from our last blog post, both these wines are now in the Island and ready for purchase here at Dunell's. We are very proud to have these wines and we are sure you are going to love them.

See you soon....

Announcing the arrival of a selection of wines from the fantastic STAETE LANDT WINERY in Marlborough, New Zealand.



Ruud and Dorien founded Staete Landt in 1998 with the vision of making intensely flavoured, complex and 100% estate grown wines from their 21 hectare vineyard on the ‘Golden Mile’ in Rapaura, Marlborough. The vineyard produces highly regarded single estate Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Riesling, Viognier, Pinot Noir and Syrah. Ruud’s focus is on winemaking and Dorien’s is on marketing and public relations.

Staete Landt is the old Dutch name given to New Zealand by Abel Tasman when he discovered the island in 1642. It means: "Land discovered in honour of the Governors (Staete) of the Dutch Republic". On his voyage Abel Tasman also discovered Tasmania (Van Diemen Land), Fiji and Tonga. At his return to the Dutch Republic it was decided to change Staete Landt to its present name "New Zealand".

The Staete Landt vineyards were planned according to the styles of wines that Ruud and Dorien wanted to produce. Aiming to make hand-crafted, complex, single vineyard wines, they divided the vineyard into 18 parcels, planting a selection of clones of the chosen varieties on various rootstocks to suit the different soil types. Each parcel is managed and harvested separately. In the vineyard the main focus is on keeping the vines healthy and balanced, in order to produce consistently ripe fruit with distinct Marlborough flavours. Through manual leaf plucking and shoot and bunch thinning they keep yields low and produce intensely flavoured grapes.

The vineyard's close proximity to the Wairau river, the main river in the Marlborough valley, produces a continuous airflow which keeps frosts away at crucial times during the grape growing season from budburst (September/October) through to harvest (March/April). The combination of the location of the vineyard, the stony riverbed soils and the heavier soils on the southern part of the vineyard enables them to produce single vineyard wines with depth and different layers of flavours.

The 2008 Sauvignon Blanc has just been bottled and will be launched after Xmas. The 2007 Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir, and Syrah are not yet bottled and will be launched in the New Year. The 2008 Riesling Dry, Riesling Auslese and Viognier will be launched after March 2009.

Staete Landt has an excellent website with technical and tasting notes. http://www.staetelandt.co.nz/


STAETE LANDT Pinot Noir 2006 Bottle £15.95

The 2006 Staete Landt Pinot Noir beautifully expresses the terroir of the clay-layered soils in the Staete Landt vineyard. The wine is elegant and multi-layered, complex with powerful spicy fruit driven tannins. The attractive aromas show strawberries and ripe black cherries with violets and a lovely earthy complexity. On the palate this is a full-bodied Pinot Noir with an elegant tannin structure and a lingering finish of spices like cloves, bay leaves and gamy flavours. This wine will repay cellaring for three to five years.
THE WINE SPECTATOR 90-92 points 'Graceful and fragrant, with a lovely array of raspberry, spice, strawberry and dried herb flavors. Savory mineral and crushed stone accents, cedary oak and a supple structure harmonize in the deft, lingering finish. Drink now through 2010.'

STAETE LANDT Sauvignon Blanc 2007 Bottle £11.95

A complex and intensely aromatic Sauvignon Blanc. This wine is perfumed with aromas of tropical fruit such as mango's, papaya and passion fruit. This sauvignon blanc is full bodied, the pungency of the tropical fruit is dominant, backed by characters of fresh cut grass, red capsicum and an elegant mineral finish. A complex style sauvignon blanc with a crisp ripe attractive acidity.
This is a wine for drinking whilst young but has the substance and concentration to develop well over two to five years once the primary fruit aromas have subsided.

STAETE LANDT Chardonnay 2006 Bottle £13.95

This wine was aged in 100% French oak barrels the majority of which were older than 5 years and approximately 25% were new. This has produced a complex yet subtle wine that has an intense, ripe nectarine, leesy aroma overlaying a creamy almond, vanilla character, rather than overt fruitiness. This is a full bodied and elegant wine, with a dry and crisp finish.

STAETE LANDT Pinot Gris 2006 Bottle £15.95

This is a full-bodied, complex dry wine. It is a lovely example of the varietal. It is full, round and ripe in the mouth with pears, guava and papaya aromas combined with intriguing hazelnut complexity. It has excellent length and structure. This wine is very approachable whilst young but will become more complex over the next five years.
Please call us on 736418 for more details and if you would like to order some of these fantastic wines. Jane will be adding these wines to the website very soon so that you can purchase online too.

Sunday 7 December 2008

It's Official, Taltarni is our best selling wine EVER!

It's official, our best selling wine ever at Dunell's is the Taltarni Brut Taché Rosé Sparkling. This wine has such a following now in Jersey and we sell over 12,000 bottles a year, quite incredible on a small island. It is such great value and it is so good that you will think it is a Champagne. It is made in exactly the way but since it is from Australia, you can not call it Champagne. This wine is very hard to beat and it is £7.95 a bottle on Christmas Special Offer....Click here for more information

Wednesday 3 December 2008

Dunell's Hosts a Champagne Tasting at the Powerhouse Retail Park

Saturday 6th December - Moët & Chandon Champagne Tasting at the Powerhouse Retail Park
Saturday 13th December - Moët & Chandon Champagne Tasting at the Powerhouse Retail Park

The Channel 103 Weekend Prize Giveaway with Dunell's

The Channel 103 Weekend Prize Giveaway 5th/6th December 2008 & 13th/14th December 2008

A fantastic chance to wine some amazing prizes. Stay tuned to Channel 103 for more information.

We will be giving away Magnums of 'Be Fabulous' Moet & Chandon N.V Champagne adorned with Swarovski Crystals, Bottles of Moet N.V. Champagne, Cases of VB Beer, 3 bottle gift boxes and a selection of different mixed cases of wines..... DON'T MISS OUT!

All you will have to do is to answer simple questions, the answers to which can be found on our website and in-store.

Monday 1 December 2008

Feast Wine Dinner (Gorey) on Thursday 20th November 2008 - Report

Anne from Feast invited us to host another wine dinner for Feast Wine Club at Feast (our East on Gorey Pier) on Thursday 20th November.

The evening was a Thai style food event and we had to select some wines to compliment the Thai food. It was another fantastic evening and the talented, enthusiastic team at Feast put in so much effort to create an atmospheric cosy Thai feel for the night, with some beautiful colourful window dressing in place, the creative skills of Lorraine were put to very good use indeed..!

It is always a challenge to match Asian style food with wines (and I confess to you now, that as an ex brewer I also sneaked in a bottled beer to show at this event..)

We started the night off with either a glass of Champagne Gallimard Brut Cuvee Reserve 'Les Riceys' N.V. currently on Christmas offer at £15.95 a bottle or a cold Tiger Beer -£24.95 a case.
We also offered these choices again with the starter of Classic Thai nibbles – rare chilli and lime tuna, chicken satay, duck spring roll. When you have a mix of flavours, texture and spices like this the Champagne worked very well, allowing each part of this dish to reveal its self.

Next on the menu was the Tom Yum Soup with Crab & Prawns, and with this dish we showed a Spanish white wine, Albarino A20 from Bodegas Castro Martin at £8.95 and a few people (mostly the boys) stayed with the Tiger beer option. The Albarino drank beautifully, it is clean crisp and fruit driven and I thought it complimented and copied with the Thai flavours very well, but if I am honest I personally thought that the Tiger beer was the better match for me on the night with the spicy Tom Yum soup. This beer brewed in Asia and imported to the UK, is made using German hops famed for their floral aroma and slightly spicy taste and it really does work very well with most Asian style food with its zesty, upfront hoppy crisp flavours. (Just like the hint of Riesling does in the white wine that we served with the Green curry).

We then had King Prawn and Scallop Thai Green curry and we offered two Australian wines, the St. Hallett Semillon/Sauvignon/Riesling ‘Poachers Blend’ 2007 currently on Christmas offer at £5.45 which I loved with this dish. The crisp ripe Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon fruit with the added hint of zesty Riesling fruit coming through on the end, really complimented the Thai green & coconut flavours. We also served St. Hallett's red, the Shiraz/Grenache/ Touriga Nacional ‘Gamekeeper`s Reserve' 2007 (also currently on Christmas offer at £5.45). It did cope well with the heat of the curry (you need a rich, ripe fruit driven red to compete with the heat of the curry) but I personally think the clear winner was the zesty, white wine or indeed the Tiger beer (ok so I admit it that I still really enjoy a cold crisp beer with spicy food, once a brewer, I do appreciate a good cold beer..)

Dessert was the superb Grilled Pineapple with ginger and lime glaze, pineapple fritters and coconut and pineapple ice cream. With this dish we showed the Hollick Botrytised Riesling 'The Nectar' £9.95 a half bottle (made in Coonawarra, Australia) and it was a very successful match, complimenting the tropical fruit and coconut flavours without being too sickly sweet an ending.
Luckily for those attending my throat/voice completely gave up at this point, so I had no choice but to leave everyone in peace for the rest of the evening and I have to thank Anne`s husband, Oliver, for making me a very gratefully received mug of lemsip with lots of honey, the perfect end to my night…

It was another very enjoyable evening at Feast, thank you Anne and Oliver and your fantastic team.

Please contact Anne at Feast on Tel 611118 for more information. http://www.feast.je/

Liz Mitchell
General Manager

Atlantic Italian Food & Wine Friday 14th November Report

We enjoyed a another fantastic evening at the Atlantic Hotel & Ocean Restaurant in the Italian room on Friday 14th November 2008.

Bruce Kendrick of Liberty Wines hosted the evening, sharing with us some very interesting info and we all left with an appreciation of just how fantastic 2004 was for Red Italian wines. The food & wines really were superb and as always the team at the Atlantic ensured that we all enjoyed a superb evening and a big thank you to everyone for looking after us so well.

On arrival we all enjoyed the CA' DEI FRATI Brut Sparkling 'Cuvee de Frati' 2004 £14.45 this wine showed very well with lovely balanced ripe fruit, delicious and very drinkable.
The first two wines at the table were the La Giustiniana Gavi di Gavi 'Lugarara' 2007 £11.95 and the Vie Di Romans Sauvignon Blanc 'Vieris'2006 £21.95. The Gavi di Gavi was very popular with everyone, and it showed beautifully, such an elegant wine & fantastic as an aperitif, but my preferred match with the food (Risotto of Jersey Crab , chive beurre blanc) was the Sauvignon Blanc which had incredible length and purity of fruit. The Risotto was absolutely delicious, if only I could make risotto as good as this one!

We then had two show stopping reds served with the Main course of Roast fillet of Irish Beef, sautéed wild mushrooms, creamed salisify. The Isole E Olena Cepparello 2004 £34.95 was my favourite on the night, it was showing very well, superb balance, elegant yet long finish and just so very drinkable.., it was a fantastic food match with the beautifully cooked beef. The Aldo Conterno Barolo ‘Colonello’ 2004 £79.95 is an incredible wine and in my opinion it just needs a bit more time before it will reveal itself in full (one for the cellar for a couple of years or longer.. ) The room was fairly evenly divided on which red they preferred, it was a very hard choice to make as they are both very classy wines.

We then enjoyed the Allegrini Amarone Classico 2004 £36.95 with an Italian cheese selection, this wine also showed exactly why it has such a great reputation, show casing the traditional power and intensity of Amarone with great structure, complexity and elegance.

The Almond Tiramisu, Kahlua syrup was a great match for the Capezzana Vin Santo Reserva 2001 (our last stock of the 2001vintage) a fantastic way to end the dinner.

If only I could spend every Friday evening eating food as delicious as this for dinner & drinking wines of this standard all evening...

Liz Mitchell
General Manager