Al Brown’s Tipping Point Project

Chef Al Brown and his winemaking friends launch Tipping Point, a wine brand that supports charities close to Brown’s heart and celebrates the regions.
Chef Al Brown and his winemaking friends launch Tipping Point, a wine brand that supports charities close to Brown’s heart and celebrates the regions.

If you want to follow something developing in New Zealand’s wine industry at the moment, go to the stuff.co.nz website and featured videos – Al Brown’s Tipping Point Project.

Al Brown – a well-known chef and entrepreneur has a new venture being developed with Rowan Dean of Constellation Wines, Gary Stewart, his graphic designer and Melanie Mark-Shadbolt who is the CE of Te Tira Whakamātaki Foundation [one of the charities that some profits will go towards]. They are developing a wine brand, without featuring Al’s face or name, that will bring
wine to the people.

Al’s visions for this venture are to bring wine down to earth, making the experience unstuffy and a more relaxed experience to encourage people to have a tipple and gain knowledge at their level. To take some of the exclusivity out of the experience, even drinking wine from a tumbler (as some restaurants already do) so more people are relaxed with choosing something they actually like to drink.

In the first video Al was touring through three of our wine regions: Hawkes Bay, Central Otago and Marlborough. Exciting stuff!

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Wairarapa Wine Trip – Saturday, 13 February

Less than a fortnight to go now and it was evident at the club barbecue that our members are really looking forward to this fun day out.

We ask all who are intending to come to double-check that your name is on the attached list. If you’re not intending to come, there’s no need to read any further.

There are three sections to this newsletter – please read all of them so that you’re up with the play.

We’ve allocated the groups along the lines of the seating at our dinners. If you’d particularly like to be in another group, you’re welcome to arrange your own swap.

However, please ensure overall group numbers remain the same and let Wayne know about the change.

If anyone has any special dietary requirements for our meal at Coney’s, please email Wayne asap.

While we encourage you to only drink as much wine as you can comfortably handle, please be aware that Nga Waka, Tiwaiwaka and Grava have small cellar doors and our groups will fill their tasting rooms. If there are significant numbers of people who are skipping a tasting at any one time, we’d ask that you make way for any members of the public who want to have a tasting.

And please also give these wineries your support – particularly Nga Waka seeing it’s unable to charge for tastings. There’s been quite a lot of discussion in various media about the difficulties faced by wineries who don’t have an on-licence, which is a pre-requisite to charge for tastings. for background, see the Stuff.nz article  Wineries unable to profit from tasting tourism call for law change.

We look forward to seeing you soon and wrapping up the club’s 40th birthday celebrations in style!

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