1309 days ago

More on Wine, Foodography and Winter Classes

New Zealand School of Food & Wine

For the last few weeks I have been travelling around NZ running a series of Wine Tasting Competitions for the NZ Sommeliers and Wine Professionals for which I am chair. It's been fun putting together a selection of 40 classic wines and preparing sets of questions to test our teams of winelovers.

We have used Kahoot! which has been enormously successful as a electronic quiz platform in these Covid times. It adds the results instantly and takes away the risk of calculation errors plus the backend provides detailed analytics on who got the answers to how many seconds it took to answer correctly. We know that of the 24 teams the highest scores were 75% correct with over 8 teams achieved above 68% correct. I can see we will use this platform for sometime!

It seems that interest in wines and spirits programmes is also bounding upwards and we have had record enrolments for all our wine classes including WSET Wine and Spirit Education Trust from UK.

This week I had the results of the latest WSET Level 2 Certificate in Wine and with a class of 20 students, 60% gained distinction, a pass of over 85%. Exciting.

Our NZQA Certificate in NZ Wine Micro-Credential is also going for strength to strength and we are about to start offering Corporate & Team Building wine options so that you can get together a group of 8 people and we will run a private programme.

New Zealand wines are much more diverse that most people imagine and it's a great thrill to be able to share lesser-known wineries and underrated regions with our participants as they taste through the wine selection. For more information, email admin@foodandwine.co.nz.

Coming up we have the Winter Forage with Riki Bennett which provides an opportunity to explore our native flora along with innovation around urban hāngi kai-cookery techniques. The FOODOGRAPHY Dinner is back and this year our theme is a Midwinter Christmas Dinner. Both events are part of Auckland's Elemental Festival.

On Sunday 1st August, we host the NZ Sommelier of the Year Awards along with wine tasting events and a Gastronomic Dinner prepared by Chef Finn and our students.

Ngā mihi,
Celia Hay

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More messages from your neighbours
21 hours ago

🧩 Crack the Code: Today’s Riddle Challenge! 🤔

Riddler from The Neighbourly Riddler

I’m a three-digit number; my tens digit is five more than my ones, and my hundreds digit is eight less than my tens—what am I?

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9 hours ago

Last call for entries to our Resene Shed of the Year 2025!

Mei Leng Wong Reporter from NZ Gardener & Get Growing

Take a look at Paul Bates' "surprisingly roomy" Tardis-inspired shed which took out our 2023 title, and if you reckon your shed is right up there, well, you could be in the running to win a robot lawnmower, Resene vouchers and a subscription to NZ Gardener. To enter, tell us why your garden shed is New Zealand's best, and send up to 5 high-quality photos to Resene Shed of the Year 2025, NZ Gardener PO Box 6341, Victoria St West, Auckland 1142. Or email to mailbox@nzgardener.co.nz. Entries close February 23, 2025.

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7 hours ago

WE SELL BOXES AND MORE!

Suzanne from Storage 4 You Ltd

Pop into our office at 100 Wairau Road to see our full range of packing supplies.

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