Welsh Spring Baby Lamb - The Wandering Palate

The 2010 vintage in Gibbston Valley, Central Otago, in the deep south of New Zealand’s South Island is one of those years that will bring a smile to the face of the regions winegrowers for all eternity. You can sense this by just looking at the grin of satisfaction on Sam Neill’s face, the proprietor of Two Paddocks; it’s the look of a man vindicated–of what they said was a folly–that the region he planted in was ‘too cool, too marginal in climate to ripen pinot noir”. They said, “You cannot make truly great pinot noir in Gibbston” Read More >

Produce, Profiled Wineries | Related to: Sam Neill, Two Paddocks, Welsh Spring Baby Lamb |

From a lost play by Eubulos, (c.405 BC - c.335 BC)
‘For sensible men I prepare only three kraters (large vase used to mix wine): one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home.

The fourth krater is not mine any more - it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness.’

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defence of the new.”

As uttered by the vitriolic restaurant critic Anton Ego, in the film “Ratatouille”, after his epiphany.