Tag Archive for: Top Tastes

Little Nessie Cafe – The Wee Coffee Monster

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I love positive people and I don’t think anyone who opens a new café in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic could be described as anything but positive. Gareth and Hayley Lewis decided to do just that and opened Little Nessie Café at the Black Cat shops on Annesbrook Drive in August 2020.

Anyone would think that opening a business during Covid-19 Level 2 would pose the biggest hurdle for their new business; but this was not the case. What they hadn’t counted on was six months of significant road works resulting in road closures right outside their business just four weeks after they opened the doors.

When I caught up with them last week their great attitude and the support from locals means this little business is still on the right track despite the challenges so far. Hayley says “we are surprised and incredibly humbled at the support we have had from so many people but especially our local and regular customers.”

 

This small café appears to have been a very welcome addition to the neighbourhood. Hayley and Gareth offer specialty coffee, a small but mighty menu that that you can enjoy inside, on the small deck or take away. One thing that really struck me about Little Nessie café is the cozy, welcoming atmosphere, it is a place you can just pop into for a quick coffee or linger over a meal or pot of tea.

Little Nessie cafe is an evolution of the food truck the couple ran in Brisbane until the Covid-19 Pandemic hit in March 2020. As Covid cases began to rise in Queensland, the couple decided it was time to come home with their family and just 12 days later they landed in Auckland, arriving two days into level 4 lockdown where they completed two weeks of self isolation before continuing on to Wellington and finally Nelson.

Reflecting on their journey, Hayley says “Having the food truck was great because we got a feel for who we are as a business. In many ways we are grateful for the opportunity Covid-19 allowed us – we were able to take our learnings from the food truck in Brisbane and start over with a more refined offering.”

“We have the staples that reflect who we are, particularly the Scottish Brekky Burger which is the most popular thing on the menu. It includes our homemade Lorne sausage which is like a cultural icon in Scotland, everyone’s mum or nana makes it. You can get a slice in a roll almost everywhere. It has been so popular with our customers people are coming from all over the region asking for ‘square sausage’ or Lorne, so we now sell it packaged for customers to take home.”

Having worked in the corporate world for several years they decided to use the marketing and business skills they have developed over the years to establish their own business. In 2019 Hayley was nearing the end of her maternity leave after having their first child Maisy while Gareth was working as an insurance broker. Feeling uninspired by his day-to-day work and after a particularly tough day in the office, they finally decided to buy their food truck and find something that would make them both excited to go work everyday.

Gareth says “We have always known we wanted to own our own business. We figured a small café would be a great place to start and allow us to spend more time together as a family which we couldn’t in our old roles.”

When it comes to the food they make Hayley says “We know what we like and hope others like it too, we want to be part of the great café culture here.”

“So far the feedback from customers has been great. We are sort of waiting for the negative, hopefully it will never happen, but we have been surprised at how positive everyone is about us and our little business.”

The original Little Nessie food truck has been back on the road in the last few months taking their delicious coffee & food to various events around the region and is available for private hire.

So if you’re looking for a new place to try and want to support a local business that is facing the challenges of Covid-19, road works and whatever else can be thrown their way with a big dose of positivity then pop into Little Nessie Café for a visit. I know this hard-working couple will reap the rewards of self employment, they have a wonderful attitude and make great food. Open from 7.30am to 2pm Monday to Friday and 8am – 12.30pm on Saturdays.

Wine Pick

Neudorf Rosie’s Block Moutere Chardonnay 2019, RRP $45 – 5 stars

When I first tasted this wine I instantly recognised the Neudorf touch. This is a new label for Neudorf Vineyards, the wine is made from 21-year-old organically grown vines on their hillside block and it’s almost difficult to describe, it is simply elegant yet powerful – the classic iron fist in a velvet glove!

The underlying power of the subtle lemon citrus, white peach, softly toasted hazelnuts and delicate ginger spice flavours, the delicate use of oak, tight mineral characters and subtle intensity add up to make this a wine that delivers evolving flavours in the glass and on the palate. It’s a very impressive debut for Neudorf’s latest single vineyard wine. Due to be released next week this is one of the finest wines I have tried to date from the very good 2019 vintage.

Pic’s & Whittakers

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A few of the key factors in the success of any business are being able to adapt, innovate and strive for continual improvement, even if you have the market sector cornered, and that is exactly what Pic Picot and his merry band of peanut butter wizards do at Pic’s Peanut Butter World.

The Pic’s story about making peanut butter at home because he thought the commercial stuff was simply awful is very well known but people often forget the risk, thoughtfulness and extensive planning required to build a business the size of Pic’s Peanut Butter into the enterprise it is today.

Let’s be honest, it is just peanut butter, damned fine peanut butter but just peanut butter none the less, it is the dedication to excellence, the branding and marketing that has made this one of New Zealand’s most trusted brands and has provided the springboard to expand the range of products produced by the enthusiastic Pic’s team that shares his dream to create a business that is important to New Zealand, and just happens to be based in the place he calls home, Nelson.

When a new Pic’s product arrives on the shelves everyone is more than happy to try it because we trust Pic and his brand but what we don’t see is the very careful market analysis and product testing that happens before you and I get to buy it.

Making products like almond butter and cashew butter seems like a simple thing to do but there is a lot of planning that goes into the production of these to ensure there’s no cross contamination with peanut products. Then there’s simple things like selling peanut butter ‘slugs’ so you can take the handy little plastic squeeze pouches with you anywhere or even selling it in buckets for those who just can’t get enough of his pure peanut butter – “we only add salt, nothing else”.

Because we live in a region where a large proportion of the world’s boysenberries are grown it seems like common sense to add boysenberry jelly to the range they produce, after all peanut butter and jelly is a classic blend to spread on your morning toast.

Honey is another product that was simple to add, just find a reliable source of premium honey and add the trusted Pic’s brand. Then there’s those who have created products like ice cream and chocolate using Pic’s peanut butter; however, creating a whole new product isn’t easy, especially when you have built a peanut butter brand on having nothing but peanuts and salt in each jar.

The latest product from Pic’s has been created in association with another trusted New Zealand brand, Whittaker’s Chocolate. Pic’s Peanut Chocolate Butter is like a Whittaker’s peanut slab in paste form, and it’s bloody delicious!

When I received a sample of this new product I phoned Pic and told him we needed to talk, the product is ridiculously good so I wanted to know what went in to creating it and getting it to market without compromising his trusted brand. We sat down over a coffee and he told me “it actually started about five years ago so it isn’t something we have jumped into on a whim.

“There had been mutterings in the firm about needing a chocolate peanut butter about 5 years ago so when a Dutch girl came to work for us as an intern and she needed a project we gave her the peanut chocolate butter as a project to research for us.

“She did some work on branding and label design and we made some trial batches and ran a public taste test at a Nelson City market day at the time, the public loved it but I was resistant because I’m a purist when it comes to peanut butter, it’s who we are as a company.

“But the team were keen to do something and kept pushing the idea to me, I just kept my thumb on the hold button for five years rather than pressing go however, I have a fantastic team and I know I need to support them as much as they support me, I trust them and their thoughts around these things and I can’t be autocratic all the time.”

Having Whittaker’s as a co-brand partner was an important part of the decision. “I love the fact they are manufacturers like us, not just a company marketing a product, I want to partner with people who make stuff rather than just selling a product, we also always want to make products that are going to be used rather than being tried once or twice then ending up being pushed to the back of the shelf in the pantry.”

That means a huge amount of effort went into creating the right peanut chocolate butter blend, “we are peanut butter makers first and foremost so it had to be a peanut butter product with a chocolate flavour rather than a chocolate product with a peanut flavour.”

When we talked about the risk of bringing a product like this to market he said of course it’s a risk, “but if we stop taking risks we become boring and that is worse than death. If you didn’t do something different you would never know what the outcome might be and just might miss the golden opportunity.”

As much as I like this new product Pic’s is first and foremost a peanut butter producer this country, and many others around the world, trust so Pic Picot would never let his company do something that will compromise the hard-earned trusted brand stamp.

A top tip from me is to try this delicious peanut chocolate butter spread on a warm croissant for a Sunday morning treat, outrageously decadent!

Published in the Nelson Mail 03-02-2010

Blackenbrook Vineyards

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A few weeks ago Ursula Schwarzenbach asked me if I would like to visit them to taste their 2020 vintage wines, of course I said yes (who wouldn’t!) so last week I met Ursula and her husband Daniel at their winery to talk about the 2020 vintage and taste some wines.

Ursula and Daniel Schwarzenbach in their vineyard at Tasman – Photo Martin de Ruyter STUFF

Over the years I have been mightily impressed by this couple and the wines they craft, as Daniel said to me last week “to be honest 80% of the winemaking happens in the vineyard, I just have to finish the process in the winery.”

This understates just how much effort the couple and their young family put into creating their delightful wines. Located on the sloping hills at Tasman, up the road behind the Tasman Store, the vineyards are managed with intense detail to ensure the fruit is in the best condition possible to turn into wine.

The 2020 vintage was notable for the Covid-19 lockdown during which the wine industry was granted essential services status to be able to harvest their once-a-year export crop. At Blackenbrook Vineyards however the final pick happened on the day before lockdown started, “we were due to finish on the Friday so by working longer hours for a few days we were able to get all the fruit picked and into the winery before lockdown”.

Ursula told me their assistant winemaker headed back to Germany early to beat lockdown restrictions but as school was also locked down their son Thomas was able to step in and help. “He has always been around the winery and helped in every aspect from the vineyards to the bottling line so he knows his way around the winery, it was just full time as assistant to Daniel for a week or so.”

The couple are also delighted with the quality of the vintage this year, “it was exceptional” says Daniel and I must say that based on the wines I tried last week I agree. For me the wines at Blackenbrook have a certain purity of flavour to them, it’s a character I find difficult to describe but the wines tend to have a perfect expression of the varietal flavours and I’m certain this comes from the meticulous vineyard management that means less intervention in the winemaking process in the winery.

“Some of the wines pretty much make themselves” says Daniel. Beautiful clean fruit equals beautiful clean flavours, “for wines like Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Blanc we didn’t do anything in the winery, we just need a good ferment to turn great, clean fruit into nice wine, we try and use very gentle processes so we don’t lose the flavours.”

I tasted seven new release wines in the hour and a half I spent at Blackenbrook and tasting notes for all of these are on my website www.toptastes.co.nz but one worth a special mention here is the 2020 Pinot Blanc (RRP$28 and Vegan certified). This is the second vintage for this variety at Blackenbrook and what a stunning wine it is!

The aromas are intense, bursting with rich cooked pear and stonefruit characters that are dusted with delightful floral notes in the background. The richness of the aromas is reflected in the weighty, delicious flavours, flavours that are balanced with a touch of freshness and deliver liquorice-like characters in the very long finish. This is a five star wine and one that will certainly find itself attached to my credit card and a place in our cellar.

Daylight saving starts on the 27th September so that means in just over a week we are going to be spending more time outside and for us that means more time cooking on the barbeque.

This week’s recipe is our favourite way to cook St Louis Babyback Pork Ribs, these are a long rack of small ribs that we buy from Raeward Fresh. To make it easier to fit on the barbeque we cut the long rack into two. For the sauce we just make enough to use fresh.

Barbeque, smoked St Louis Pork Ribs

Serves two to four people depending on whether or not you serve side dishes with it.

Ingredients

1 pack St Louis Pork Ribs

The dry rub lasts a long time when stored in a jar so we make a decent amount and use it as we need it. Just double or triple the recipe if you want to save some time next time.

Dry Rub

  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 2 teaspoons Kosher salt
  • 2 teaspoons black pepper
  • 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon ground mustard
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon celery salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Use a fork to crush any clumps of sugar or seasonings. Store in an airtight container for up to a month.

Method

Rub the dry mix into the ribs the day before, put them on a plate, cover  and leave in the fridge overnight.

  1. Fire up your favourite barbeque, preferably with some wet wood chips (manuka, cherry wood etc)
  2. Place the ribs in a foil tray and cook at about 120 C for three hours.
  3. Turn every hour and for the last hour baste the ribs several times with one of the many specialist meat sauces you will find in most good food stores.
  4. Cut into single ribs and serve with your favourite side dish.

We love these with an Italian coleslaw and the recipe for this is on my website www.toptastes.co.nz/recipes

Published in the Nelson Mail 16.09.20

Rustic Cuisine

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Rustic Cuisine on Rutherford St is owned by my two favourite French people, Mylene and Greg Auphan who used to own La Gourmandise. Their latest venture is to develop a range of French style foods in jars ready for you to take home and enjoy.

It goes without saying that when you are developing a new concept you need to earn a living so they took over the building opposite Nelson College for Girls and are producing the wonderful crepes and galettes everyone enjoyed at La Gourmandise as well as making cabinet food for morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea.

Rustic Cuisine is a regular morning stop for me, the coffee is too good to go past, and I have noticed a large number of regulars doing the same thing. The fact they sell outstanding pastries doesn’t hurt their reputation for quality either.

However it is the food-in-a-jar that is the future for this young business, Greg told me they have invested in high quality equipment so they can produce enough to take to a much bigger New Zealand market. He also told me he is developing new recipes and has had to refine how he prepares his current recipes because the equipment cooks the food quite differently.

“Because it’s quite a long cook at a high temperature I need to adjust recipes to make sure the food doesn’t break down in the jars, we are doing lots of small trials to refine everything before we go into full production.”

In the meantime you and I get to try the new recipes he is developing before he adjusts the cooking process for each one. Dishes like Coq au vin, Beef Bolognese, Lentil Dahl, Onion Soup and their wonderful Cassoulet are prepared and packaged in jars ready for us to take home, heat up and enjoy.

My top tip for your next visit to Rustic Cuisine – if you see some in the food cabinet don’t even try to resist the lemon meringue tarts, they are outstandingly tasty.

First published in the Nelson Mail 03.06.20

Gelato Roma

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I first wrote about Gelato Roma back in March 2016 and a lot has happened with this exciting Nelson business in the intervening years, so I thought it was time to find out more and tell you about it.

Let’s start by having a quick look back at the history of Gelato Roma. The business was established in Nelson by Yuri Aristarco with a couple of business partners after he arrived here in 2011 from Genova, a seaside coastal city in Italy near the northern France border and not too far from Milan.

In Genova Yuri ran a restaurant that had a wine bar on ground floor with a 120 seat restaurant on first floor. He told me Gelato is part of the Italian food culture and a single town in Italy might have 200 gelato producers but people have their favourite producer, just like we have a favourite coffee shop or restaurant, and will travel to the other side of town to get the gelato they favour.

Yuri and Daniela Aristarco (photo: Braden Fastier Nelson Mail & Stuff)

When I had a coffee with Yuri and his wife Daniela, who now run the business by themselves, he told me “There are lots of really good producers in this region and I wanted to make something that reflects who we are while adding something really good to the region too.”

I asked them what makes their gelato special and what are the key differences between ice cream, gelato and sorbet because they do make sorbet as well.

Yuri says the real difference between premium ice cream and gelato is that ice cream has about 18% butterfat content while gelato has a lot less and sorbet has none.

Daniela says, “The fat coats your palate and can disguise the real flavours of the product, too much sugar can also mask the beautiful real flavours so we use a lot less sugar than you may find in similar products.”

Yuri said the second key difference is that gelato has less air infused as part of the churning process. If you let a scoop of ice cream and a scoop of gelato melt the ice cream will seem larger but if you take the air into account the servings are about the same size.”

Less air in gelato means the flavours also appear to be more intense and he said if you have a serving of gelato and ice cream side-by-side you can really taste the difference.

The third main difference is the serving temperature, “it’s tied to the butterfat and air content, ice cream needs to be served at between -18 degrees and -20 degrees while gelato is between -12 and -14. Because it’s not as cold your taste buds detect the flavour more easily.”

Daniela told me their product isn’t too sweet either, “we are very careful about amount and type of sugar we use. As a choice we don’t over-sugar, sugar can be like cream and cover the natural flavours and we want the fruit flavours and other raw ingredients to shine so we rely on the natural fruit sugars with as little added sugar as possible. Yuri is good at keeping the added sugar content as low as possible and we are quite proud of that, however, like any other frozen product it is a treat.”

Sorbets are sweeter than gelato because they are water based and the Gelato Roma berry sorbets have 45% fruit content, “get a scoop and almost half is fruit, zero fat because there is no milk and that makes it suitable for people with dairy intolerance and for vegans.”

Daniela said there are other little differences but these are the most important, “then you take into account the raw materials we use and the recipes Yuri develops that makes our gelato and sorbet a true artisan product.

“Because we’re a small artisan producer we love to work with other local, high quality, producers that are often artisan producers too. Our suppliers are important to us, for the quality of the product we make and also to our story when we are selling it to retailers.”

Yuri and Daniela Aristarco (photo: Braden Fastier Nelson Mail & Stuff)

At Gelato Roma all the berries they use are locally grown, as you would expect they use Pic’s peanut butter and they have just started to use Thorvald and Little River yoghurt. “We don’t want to import from overseas, our philosophy is to add value to ingredients and products already produced here, even though we are now a nationwide artisan business we have a focus on local products” says Yuri.

As expected there are a few things they can’t get locally, like coconut and mango because they simply aren’t produced here, but they do source everything from Nelson first, then New Zealand and overseas as a last resort.

It’s this dedication to using quality, fresh ingredients that I think makes their products special and it’s why they are now selling Nelson produced gelato and sorbet in 23 outlets around New Zealand.

“Our retail partners, who have our display freezers and scoop our gelato, and the three distributors we work with are important to us as we grow. As part of the artisan producer experience we want to provide we give them as much support as we can”

“In the top of the South we partner with five retailers as well as the truck and trailer that are franchised out to an independently owned business. Co-owners Colin Harrop and Barry Mitchell are set up in Tahuna at the beach and go to the markets, fairs, festivals and other events around the region” says Daniela.

Yuri told me they have the production capacity to grow further but they want to keep it as an artisan product, “we have everything in place with the capacity we have now, we can be bigger without compromising on the quality of the product and without using pre-made powders.”

Gelato Roma products are also sought after by chefs who often ask for a custom gelato or sorbet, “a few weeks ago we made a sorbet for Tutu Cider For the Cider Festival, last year we made a sorbet for No1 Family Estate using their sparkling wines for them to serve at the Marlborough Wine and Food Festival, and we made many other sorbets using Sauvignon Blanc from White Heaven ,  Gewürztraminer from Framingham, Moa cider, beer from Golden Mile Brewery only to mention some.

“We love making these customised products and we can only do it because we are artisan producers. We can decide to make a new product one day and ship it the next day, we have the expertise to be able to do this, Yuri has to develop the recipe to make sure the product flavours are properly balanced and that is the real skill” says Daniela.

The success of Roma Gelato isn’t just limited to the demand they have for their tasty treats, at the New Zealand Ice Cream Awards in 2019 they were awarded five medals as well as the Best in Category for Gelato for their salted caramel gelato.

All this means if you visit one of their retailers you won’t only get a delicious treat you will be supporting a number of other producers in the Nelson region, and I love that.

Published in the Nelson Mail 22.01.20

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2019 Vintage Wines in Nelson

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At the risk of repeating myself I love this time of the year, everything in the garden is starting to sprout into life again after being dormant during the winter, the daylight hours are longer, daylight saving has started, the sun is warming us once again and most importantly the first of the 2019 vintage wines are on the shelves for you and me to buy.

A couple of week’s ago I went to the trade tasting session of the Wine Nelson annual new release tasting and with some 120 wines available for tasting, along with a few special bottles some producers had tucked under their tasting tables, I simply wasn’t going to be able to taste every wine in the two hours available.

To get a snapshot of the 2019 vintage across the region I tried a couple of new release wines from each producer and I have to say, my suspicions about a vintage of outstanding quality were confirmed, 2019 wine produced in this region are simply exceptional.

The highlight of the vintage was the severe drought that gripped the region, there was no rain at all between Christmas and when harvest was due to start in early March. This created a number of challenges in vineyards where the soil is stony and free-draining while well established vineyards located on clay based soils came through the drought without too many issues at all.

As happens when you are working with Mother Nature she usually does a few unexpected things so it was no real surprise when it rained just as harvest was due to start. Fortunately most vineyards were in pristine condition, fruit was ready to harvest a week or two earlier than normal and grape growers are getting used to a bit of rain in early autumn so were well set to manage the rain when it did arrive.

While growing conditions seemed to be exceptional the heat was maybe a little too much; warm, humid night-time conditions meant disease was always a risk but most importantly the lack of cool temperatures at night slowed flavour development in the grapes.

The result was grapes in excellent condition with natural sugar levels rising rapidly but grapes that could do with a bit more flavour. In many locations around the region the first burst of rain did a huge amount of good to the fruit, as long as the grapes weren’t too ripe with soft skins the extra water didn’t split the grapes and encourage rot, but it did dilute the sugars a little giving the fruit a chance to develop more flavour as the rains also brought slightly cooler evenings.

The day or two extra that grape growers were able to leave their fruit on the vines has resulted in exceptional flavours in all of the wines I have tasted from the 2019 vintage.

As you would expect, every vineyard is different with fruit ripening at slightly different times and this year was no exception, there were a couple of vineyards where the rain didn’t help some varieties and growers chose not to harvest a few tonne of fruit. A wise move indeed, better to leave compromised fruit behind than compromise your brand by producing substandard wines.

Despite a small amount of fruit not being harvested 2019 was the largest vintage on record in the Nelson region. Some 12,370 tonnes of wine grapes were harvested in the region, an increase of 36% on the small 2018 vintage. It was also 3.1% of the total New Zealand harvest for 2019 and made Nelson the 4th largest producer of wine grapes in the country.

While 3.1% may not seem much we need to remember that Marlborough produces 76.6% (305,467 tonnes in 2019) of grapes grown in New Zealand, Nelson moves ahead of Central Otago and is now only behind Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne in terms of production.

The other notable feature of the 2019 grape harvest in Nelson was how fast it was. In a perfect vintage grapes ripen at different time meaning winemakers can control the flow of wine production in the winery at a nice pace, this year the harvest was short and intense.

For smaller producers the vintage lasted a mere 10 to 14 days with every variety hitting the winery at the same time and while this did put winemakers and facilities under pressure there were also plenty of smiles on tired winemakers faces. The smiles were brought about because of the incredible quality of fruit being delivered from vineyards for them to work their magic with.

Again, it goes without saying some of the larger vineyards couldn’t be harvested before the long days of rain arrived and caused havoc with remaining fruit so imagine just how big the vintage could have been if Mother Nature didn’t have a little cry.

What do the wines 2019 vintage taste like? In a word, beautiful!

My picks for this year – 2019 wines like Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Blanc and Rosé from Nelson are packed with ripe fruit flavours with refreshing yet soft acidity making them irresistible.

Based on some barrel samples I had recently, when wines like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are released in about 12 months you simply have to buy them, there are some real treats slumbering away in barrels.

Most wineries open their cellar doors after a break for vintage and winter at Labour Weekend so head to www.winenelson.co.nz and download the regional wine map then spend a few days enjoying the beautiful wines on offer in this region.