Beautiful Weekend

Had dear old Mum over for the weekend and the weather decided to be gorgeous for a change ... back to normal now.

We did the booze tasting at the Onetangi Rd Vinyard, which is well worth it. They basically give you half a glass of each bit of plonk they make, eight bits in all, for NZ$10.00 ... good value. That is four beers and four wines.

Beers:
The blond makes a nice daytime or lunch beer, it is mellow and wheaty. Baroona Original is the standard beer, OK, a bit like Steinlager Pure. The Full Malty edition packs a wallop, and is good for a late afternoon sundowner. The dark ale is orangy, like it has orange peel in it ... I feel that all dark ales suffer from inevitable comparison with Guinness but this manages to be different enough to overcome the prejudice. Faves are the wheat and the malty.

Wines: 2 whites, a rose and a red
Cab Sav is a surprise with strong granny smith and cinnamon accents - wine for summer, have it with fruit. I forgot the other white because it was nothing special. The rose was the Sav with a bit of merlot for color - the result mellows out the apple tones making this more of a wine to have with meal - meat meal. The red was a Merlot and very smooth, slightly smoky.

Back at my place and the rest of the weekend was either sitting on the deck watching the birds (Tui's, fantails, riflemen and pigeons all payed a visit) or inside watching season 6 of 24. That was basically the weekend.

Spring is clearly here giving me a massive asthma attack after nothing all winter ... got another doctor visit to come then. Tomorrow I have marriage guidance courtesy the taxpayer and the Family Court. I'm quite nervous about this - if you visit the FC website and read the "advise to men" section it basically says "this is happening because you are a heartless bastard and you need to wake your ideas up" ... in contrast to the advice to women which is much more sympathetic. But we'll see. This one is solo, wife went first for diplomatic reasons, the next one will be together ... after that we are either getting back together (unlikely) or finalizing the property separation.

For now though - hello 24 season 7.