Wine Hell

It didn't take too long. We've been here for about eight weeks now, but tonight I think I've angered the wine gods. They're up there now, red-faced and mean. For two months we've fostered our best viticultural intentions and we've drunk an awful lot of good wine. And we've remained faithful to New Zealand.

But New Zealand wines are so expensive! They're grown and bottled in the central Otago valley, a couple of hundred miles from here. The climate is perfect, the land is cheap, the expertise is right here: these facts should result in cheap wine.

So, how is it that I can buy a wine bottled in California for half the price of one grown and bottled right here? Or Australian wine, which is cheaper than mouthwash (and tastes like it sometimes too)? I'm not an economist, so I don't know. But I do know that I wanted a cheap drink tonight, and that I couldn't afford another $22 bottle of locally-produced wine.

Jacob's Creek Merlot: $8.99.

Australian. Cheaper than mouthwash. Very dependable. Sorry wine gods. (ck)

Insane Dunedinite #3

Today, we have Insane Dunedinite #3. This fella pops up all over town, singing and clapping, barking and yelping. He's an entertainer. His clapping follows no discernible rhythm: two loud claps, no claps, three quick claps, then one clap. He sings his own interpretation of the classics, usually rendering them completely unrecognizable. His voice is distinctive and untamed.

Clap! Clap!

I'm a little bit scared of him. I took this photo with my zoom function, from pretty far away. He was standing on George Street, which was busy with Saturday shoppers, rushing through the rain. Emeline tells me he was singing All I Need is the Air That I Breathe. It's fortunate, really, that he's so low maintenance because his profit margin can probably be measured in nanodollars. I was listening too but, for all know, he could have been singing in Hungarian.

Strange vocalizations + unrealistic financial expectations = Insane

(ck)

Boooo ... the first snow!

Incredibly c-c-c-c-cold here right now. Yesterday morning, we drove into work with wet drops of freezing rain hitting the windshield. Too early! (ck)

I like this picture

Another fishing trip ...

Last weekend, we went out onto the peninsula again and tried to catch blue cod for breakfast. This time around I used chicken hearts as bait. I didn't catch a thing, except for some crabs that seemed to like the chicken hearts. Either way (despite our complete failure to catch any fish and having to drive into town for breakfast instead), I can't believe that we would ever get tired of driving along the loops and twists of the peninsula road, watching the city recede behind us into a pale strip of buildings crowded against the harbor.

Us: Nil

The Ocean: Three

(ck)

What's for dinner?

Living as close to the sea as we do, it's not difficult to find fresh seafood in the grocery store: green-lipped mussels for $2 a pound, clams, blue cod, paddle crabs, tuna, and fresh salmon. On Friday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk at work and I could actually smell the sea. The wind must have been sweeping into the harbor in just the right direction to bring the briny tang of it to my office.

Usually though, the seafood is surprisingly expensive for a coastal city. (Hence the failed fishing expeditions.) And so on Saturday morning I couldn't resist a three-and-a-half foot conger eel for just $2 at the farmers' market. That's about $1.60 in US dollars. There was another eel in the tub that was bigger around than my leg, but we couldn't have carried it home. Emeline was, um, impressed. In her defense, it was really disgusting and covered with mucus.

Next week: What the hell to do with conger eel? (ck)

From the top of Sandymount

This is the view from the top of Sandymount, one of the tallest points on the peninsula. We got here after a two-hour walk across pastures filled with woolly fat sheep. To the left, you can see Sandfly Bay, which supposedly is populated by some territorial seals, and across to the right, is Hooper's Inlet. (ck)