Dinner just disappeared into the rapids. The trout’s last-ditch leap for freedom gets it off the hook and lands it back in the jade waters of the plaited Wairau River, which weaves its way up Marlborough’s Wairau Valley to spill into Cloudy Bay on the north-eastern coast.
It’s a rookie mistake, not snagging your catch properly, made despite the guidance of local fly-fishing guru John Gendall. Fortunately others have more luck.
We’re here with Cloudy Bay winery to explore the fruits of the terroir beyond its vineyards. One of four groups deployed to far-flung corners of the region, our mission is to forage ingredients for a guest chef to prepare for a degustation dinner – an experience the winery offers visitors along with tailor-made tastings and vineyard tours. In our case it will be Ben Shewry, the New Zealand-born chef and owner of Melbourne’s Attica restaurant. Attica was named on the prestigious World’s 50 Best Restaurants list last year. It’s their fourth year running on the list and they’re the only Australian restaurant to make it in 2016.
Gathering shellfish for dinner.
Cloudy Bay is one of the pioneers in the Marlborough sauvignon blanc story. The winery sits on the alluvial plains of the Wairau Valley between the bay that inspired its name and the Richmond Ranges.
Back when it was established in 1985 by winemakers David Hohnen and Kevin Judd, it was one of just five wineries banking on the potential of a region marked by long sunny days and cool nights; now there are more than a hundred, delivering two-thirds of the country’s production.
There’s more to Cloudy Bay than sauvignon blanc, however. The winery has a tight portfolio of well-regarded wines: Pelorus, one of the country’s top sparkling wines, elegant pinot noir and refined chardonnay, a variety head winemaker Tim Heath, who’s been with the label since 2005, is particularly fond of. “The undiscovered gem here for me is chardonnay,” he says. “It’s lively and fresh and has some restraint. It’s the undisputed king or queen of the white grape.”
Checking out the harvest.
Tim is a keen angler and thanks to him we have two trout along with some roe. The roe is served raw on kawakawa leaves as a curtain-raiser to the degustation dinner. Our haul from the gathering part of the equation includes koura, the native freshwater crayfish.
Our counterparts, meanwhile, are game hunting at a high-country station above the Awatere Valley, diving for lobster and gathering shellfish in the bays formed by the frayed north-eastern tip of the South Island, the Marlborough Sounds, and foraging for native plants with Charles Royal, a Maori chef and leading expert on edible indigenous plants.
Back at the winery, the assembled catch of the day holds much promise for Ben. For the internationally acclaimed chef, foraging is no fad. Growing up on a farm in Taranaki, it was part of his everyday life, and he’s unfazed by the job of figuring out an eight-course menu for the following evening on the fly.
The setting for the forage dinner.
“We’re thinking of this as not so much cooking a dinner as having a party,” he says, introducing the degustation on the night. It’s more a riot of imagination. A dish he calls ‘A 20-Metre Walk at Uncle Joe’s’, is named for a local nut producer and supplier for Attica. Ben sourced every element in the dish (bar the salt) within a 20-metre radius of the Blenheim farm to make a cool broth of nashi juice with green hazelnuts, water chestnuts, hazelnut oil, spruce tips and native green peppercorns – a super-clean and surprising star dish.
Missing the blood from the foraged deer, which had already been hung, Ben substitutes blood plums and a beetroot dressing in a venison tartare, which is served on a purée of black garlic. “I wasn’t keen to use it at first,” he says of the local product. “Black garlic is very in-vogue at restaurants and that means I’m not very interested in it, but this is really something.”
Ben Shewry tops minced paura with basil.
Ben pays homage to the classic Kiwi paua fritter with another of the dishes: “Paua was one of the main food sources for my family as a child. It was free and it was wild.” His version combines minced paua with corn in the form of lightly fermented juice and custard, local pine nuts, and various basils from the winery gardens.
In a tribute to local tradition, he makes a surprise appearance on the neatly clipped lawn and digs up a steaming pot of spuds – floury potatoes smashed with white garlic purée, vinegar and mint – in a nod to the traditional hangi.
The finale is an ephemeral ice cream made with Jersey milk and sugar, served with six varieties of plum, simply chopped and served in their juice.
Jersey milk with six varieties of plum.
Tim, meanwhile, has been foraging in the Cloudy Bay wine cellar and serves vintage bottles in tandem with current-release wines. A 1987 sauvignon blanc, recorked during a screening project of the old stock, is creamy and mellow, and takes us nearly back to the beginnings of the label, striking a nostalgic note in a memorable evening.
Words by : Toni Mason.
Photography by : Kieran Scott.
This was first published in Taste magazine.
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