More on Wine, Foodography and Winter Classes

For the last few weeks I have been travelling around NZ running a series of Wine Tasting Competitions for the NZ Sommeliers and Wine Professionals for which I am chair. It's been fun putting together a selection of 40 classic wines and preparing sets of questions to test our teams of winelovers.

We have used Kahoot! which has been enormously successful as a electronic quiz platform in these Covid times. It adds the results instantly and takes away the risk of calculation errors plus the backend provides detailed analytics on who got the answers to how many seconds it took to answer correctly. We know that of the 24 teams the highest scores were 75% correct with over 8 teams achieved above 68% correct. I can see we will use this platform for sometime!

It seems that interest in wines and spirits programmes is also bounding upwards and we have had record enrolments for all our wine classes including WSET Wine and Spirit Education Trust from UK.

This week I had the results of the latest WSET Level 2 Certificate in Wine and with a class of 20 students, 60% gained distinction, a pass of over 85%. Exciting.

Our NZQA Certificate in NZ Wine Micro-Credential is also going for strength to strength and we are about to start offering Corporate & Team Building wine options so that you can get together a group of 8 people and we will run a private programme.

New Zealand wines are much more diverse that most people imagine and it's a great thrill to be able to share lesser-known wineries and underrated regions with our participants as they taste through the wine selection. For more information, email admin@foodandwine.co.nz.

Coming up we have the Winter Forage with Riki Bennett which provides an opportunity to explore our native flora along with innovation around urban hāngi kai-cookery techniques. The FOODOGRAPHY Dinner is back and this year our theme is a Midwinter Christmas Dinner. Both events are part of Auckland's Elemental Festival.

On Sunday 1st August, we host the NZ Sommelier of the Year Awards along with wine tasting events and a Gastronomic Dinner prepared by Chef Finn and our students.

Ngā mihi,
Celia Hay

More messages from your neighbours

2 hours ago

Kauri Glen Reserve treetop bridge and boardwalk now open!

John Gillon from John Gillon - Kaipatiki Local Board

NEWSFLASH: The wait is over and the Kauri Glen Reserve treetop bridge and boardwalk is NOW OPEN to the public! Check it out!

And please join us for our official opening/celebration in a couple of weeks!
➡️ When: 12pm Sunday 28 April
➡️ Where: Kauri Glen Road entrance to Kauri Glen Reserve
➡️ Facebook event: www.facebook.com...
Free BBQ! Walk the new track!

This is a new step-free route between Kauri Glen Road and Tui Glen Road, with a refurbished track (including steps) to Raymond Terrace. The new bridge is around 6 storeys high with a very impressive view of the forest tree tops.
The new tracks, bridge and boardwalk have been built to a standard to help prevent the spread of kauri dieback disease, which is especially important in this park.
*** Please always clean your shoes, bikes, prams and wheelchairs at the stations. ***

Note: We made the decision to allow public access earlier than expected to prevent further damage to the forest by those who were throwing the fences into the trees 🙁

- Funded by the Kaipātiki Local Board and Natural Environment Targeted Rate.