Flag debacle aside, 2015, the year this wine was released, was a great one for John Key (IMAGE: TINA TILLER)
Flag debacle aside, 2015, the year this wine was released, was a great one for John Key (IMAGE: TINA TILLER)

KaiJuly 20, 2018

John Key’s personalised pinot noir, reviewed

Guest writer
Flag debacle aside, 2015, the year this wine was released, was a great one for John Key (IMAGE: TINA TILLER)
Flag debacle aside, 2015, the year this wine was released, was a great one for John Key (IMAGE: TINA TILLER)

A bottle of the (former) PM’s Pinot All Noir came into our correspondent’s possession via a shady route of backdoor deals and dirty politics… but no ponytails were harmed.

This weekend, I sat in my rented Grey Lynn villa as the wind blew literal puddles of rain through the huge gap under the front door, and drank a wine that was chosen for me by the erstwhile leader of our country, John Key.

He did not directly gift me this bottle. This honour is usually reserved for people who work in his office, do something for him, or whose ponytail he has yanked in an ill-advised attempt to be fun.

Instead, it came to me via a shady route of backdoor deals and dirty politics, otherwise known as a friend of a friend who doesn’t really drink wine gave it to me because I’m an enormous nerd. If being a nerd means random acquaintances gift you bottles of wine, then bring on a life of defending Elon Musk on the internet.

The wine in question is a bottle of Central Otago pinot noir from the 2010 vintage, made by the good people at Prophet’s Rock. The part of Otago it comes from, Bendigo, is just north of Cromwell, and is one of the warmer parts of the region. This means the wines tend to be a bit bigger and a bit fruitier, and end up being the kind of wines that – with all due respect – wine bros LOVE.

John Key isn’t the only prominent wine bro with an interest in Central Otago wine. Mark Weldon, whose attempt to update the news programmes at MediaWorks was famously met with widespread mutiny, owns Terra Sancta wines in Bannockburn, and beloved actor Sam Neill owns Two Paddocks, where he makes wines, spouts wisdom on Twitter and lovingly tends to his pigs.

The wine, which came out in 2015, doesn’t look like a regular Prophet’s Rock wine. It’s branded with a fancy, stylised JK, and has been signed personally by our man in Parnell. It looks very stylish, but the best part about the bottle is the blurb, clearly written by somebody who was having an enormous amount of fun.

“Where rocky soils are as negotiable as a TPP agreement, and temperatures plunge faster than a stock in Shanghai,” the bottle cheekily tells me about Central Otago, flashing back to a simpler time, pre-Trump, when all we had to worry about was whether we were going to be saddled with an ugly-ass flag.

It’s almost heartbreaking, looking at it now. This wine was made in the days when John Key still thought his legacy was going to be a garish monument to sport flying off the top of the Harbour Bridge. “My arms were like lead from waving our silver fern flag,” the bottle says optimistically. “Now there’s a good idea.”

Harking back to simpler times (photo: supplied)

Flag debacle aside, 2015 was a great year for Key. His bestie, Richie McCaw (along with the rest of the All Blacks) brought home the World Cup, and he got to gleefully share a beer with the team in the changing rooms at Twickenham. He also managed not to embarrass himself while shaking anyone’s hand.

This wine is a celebration of that occasion, more than any other event from that year. It’s called – and I kind of really love this – the PM’s Pinot All Noir. It’s a joke you have to think about for a second, a joke where you can congratulate yourself for getting it, even though it’s not hard at all to get. It’s an everyman’s joke, much like the man it sets out to celebrate.

I drank it with my flatmate as she googled pictures of highland cattle on her phone, for some reason, punctuating my nerdy swirling, sipping and note-scrawling with random comments like, “That one’s hair is blowing in the breeze!” Her assessment of the wine was simply, “I’d drink it.”

My own thoughts on the matter are slightly more nuanced.

My first thought is that years of being a Parnell-dwelling bazillionaire (and drinking correspondingly nice wines) has done wonders for JK’s palate – this wine is an absolute pleasure.

It’s surprisingly juicy and fresh, given its age – a 2010 Pinot Noir is getting on, even in 2015. The wine is giving me cherry and milk chocolate, as well as a whiff of poos (which is widely considered a good thing in pinot noir, for some reason). The palate is big and bold, with lots of fruit, some spice, and a nice seam of tannin.

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    You can tell it’s not a cheap wine – there’s plenty of oak, and it’s complex enough to suggest that it’s some of Prophet’s Rock’s premium grapes, rather than the dregs. It’s not a wine I can usually afford, and as I sipped on this wine that was chosen by a man who owns a holiday home in Hawai’i, I thought to myself – is this trickle-down economics in action?

    The Pinot All Noir is unapologetically Kiwi, much like John Key. There’s not much subtlety – this wine is big and fruity and brash, a Central Otago classic. It speaks more to the John Key who would mince offensively down a runway trying to be funny, or cheerily play golf at every opportunity with his bosom bud Barack Obama. It’s polarising, sure, but it gets the job done, and gets it done with pizzazz.

    The Spinoff’s beverage content is brought to you by Fine Wine Delivery Co, which is completely and utterly devoted to good taste, whether it’s wine, food, craft beer, whisky, rum… Check out their website or pop into one of the two Auckland superstores.

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    Catch! (The Spinoff does not advocate throwing beers, dark or otherwise)
    Catch! (The Spinoff does not advocate throwing beers, dark or otherwise)

    KaiJuly 19, 2018

    Do not fear the dark side – drink it

    Deputy editor
    Catch! (The Spinoff does not advocate throwing beers, dark or otherwise)
    Catch! (The Spinoff does not advocate throwing beers, dark or otherwise)

    Fill the void of those long, lonely winter nights with a dark beer – there’s one out there for you, we promise. 

    There’s no denying that these are dark times, friends – both symbolically and literally. Yes, the world has gone to hell in a handcart, but more pressingly, it’s winter. It’s cold. Even the usually tropical paradise of Ponsonby plummeted to 6°C the other morning.

    My point being, now is not a time for bright and breezy pilsners, golden goses or sunny saisons. It is a time to stay home and hide in a corner with a dark beer – a beer that will make you feel like everything is going to be OK.

    “Oh, but I don’t like dark beers,” I hear some of you whining. Rubbish. There are myriad styles available, many of which have little in common other than their deep, dark, delightfully depressing hue, so there’s sure to be one worth a try.

    You’ll likely be familiar with stouts – the most famous of which is Guinness – and porters. These days, the difference between the two is negligible, but originally stouts were stronger versions of porters. Today, stouts tend to be darker and more roasty-tasting than their smoother porter siblings.

    Within the stout and porter categories are multiple sub-categories, such as oatmeal stout, where oats are added during the brewing process to create a smooth, full-bodied beer. Panhead’s Blacktop Oat Stout, which the Dietary Requirements crew enjoyed during the recording of our inaugural podcast, is a fine example of this style.

    Another sub-category is the imperial stout, allegedly so named because back in the 18th century, English brewers exported this beer to the court of the Empress of Russia, Catherine II. What you need to know about imperial stouts is they are strong – usually with an ABV in excess of 9% – so go easy, you hear? The 8 Wired iStout is a classic Kiwi rendition.

    Closely related to the imperial stout is the Baltic porter, basically the result of brewers in the Baltic regions trying their hand at recreating the imperial stout and using lager yeast instead of ale yeast. These days, they are generally less roasty-tasting than imperial stouts, but still strong AF. Garage Project and Sawmill do good Kiwi versions.

    Milk stouts are brewed with lactose, a sugar derived from milk, which makes them a touch on the sweet side. Many brewers accentuate this by adding chocolate, coffee and the like, such as in Behemoth’s Triple Chocolate Milk Stout (the tagline is “just like a chocolate milkshake only beery”) and 8 Wired’s Flat White Coffee Milk Stout. Or, if you’re Garage Project, cornflakes – their Cereal Milk Stout tastes like the “sweet remnants of the breakfast bowl”. Delicious.

    Luke White, director of beer subscription service Beer Jerk, says for the uninitiated, these dessert-style beers can be a great introduction to the dark side. Kererū’s Imperial Nibs Porter, made with cacao nibs, vanilla and coconut toasted over mānuka wood and bark, is another tasty (and dangerously drinkable for 8.5%) example.

    There are many, many more variations on the porter and stout styles that don’t fit neatly into the aforementioned sub-categories, but one of the aims of this story is to prove there are dark beers beyond them, so carry on we must.

    Which brings me to schwarzbier, a German style of black lager that’s a very approachable introduction to dark beers. “It’s a perfect balance when you want something refreshing but also full of flavour and not too heavy,” says White. He’s particularly fond of Black Monk by Hawke’s Bay brewery Zeelandt, and Night Caller from Colab Brewing.

    The black IPA is another non-stouty style that’s a personal favourite of mine. It may sound like an oxymoron — the P in IPA, of course, stands for pale – and boringly literal types have taken issue with the name, so in the States they’re often known as American black ales or Cascadian dark ales (something to do with the Cascade Mountains in western North America, apparently).

    But despite perhaps not technically making sense, it totally does – these beers combine the resiny, fruity flavours of the hop-forward IPAs we know and love with a base of malty roastiness and a deep, dark hue.

    Basically they’re hoppy, but they’re black. Brilliant, right?

    Despite their deliciousness, the apparent demise of the black IPA was reported by American magazine All About Beer last year and, perhaps tellingly, not too many New Zealand breweries have them in their core ranges. But Croucher makes Moonride, Lakeman the Badonkadonk and Wanaka-based B.Effect has the C-Bomb, and through Beer Jerk I was recently introduced to the Cascade Chaos, a very nice black IPA by a small Wellington brewery called JuiceHead. 8 Wired does the slightly funky brettanomyces-fermented Wireless black IPA, and I look forward to trying the newly released Mr. Wow!, a black Belgium IPA from Dunedin brewery New New New.

    There’s also the now-legendary-in-beer-circles Pot Kettle Black by Yeastie Boys, which, despite being called a South Pacific porter on its label, shares many characteristics with the black IPA. This hoppy number “balances the delectable dark malt flavours of a traditional porter with the fruity hop characteristics usually associated with modern craft pale ales”, says White. “It’s an excellent introduction to dark beers for anyone who’s still a bit unsure. A gateway porter, if you will.”

    But before you charge on through that gateway to the dark side, here’s a final tip. New Zealanders tend to like their beers icy cold, but try to resist the urge, particularly with dark beers. Aim for between 7°C and 12°C (your fridge is probably somewhere between 2°C and 5°C), or even warmer for stronger beers.

    The Spinoff’s Beverage content is brought to you by Fine Wine Delivery Co. They’re completely and utterly devoted to good taste, whether it’s wine, food, craft beer, whisky, rum… They firmly believe that eating and drinking well is an essential part of a life well lived, and that it’s possible on almost any budget. You just have to know where to look… Their website is a great place to start, or if you’re in Auckland, come into either of their purple SuperStores at 42 Lunn Ave, Mt Wellington, or 60 Constellation Drive, North Shore.

    Kai