International interest grows
New enquiries have come in today from USA from balloonists who are coming south of the Equator next March and April. They will start by attending New Zealand’s long running balloon event:
Balloons over Waikato
New Zealand’s premier hot air ballooning event!
24-28 March 2010
This post will serve as an initial invitation to all New Zealand balloonists to attend our
Canowindra Challenge 5th to 11th April 2010
Of course Leeton will also be hosting a balloon event over Easter which is 2nd to 5th April 2010.
19 days of almost non stop ballooning!!!!
Balloon festival is up, up and away
INTERNATIONAL EVENT: Graham Kerr says a new international balloon festival could attract thousands of visitors to the region.
BY LISA COX —Central Western Daily Orange NSW
The challenge, which will involve a week of hot air balloon competition and at least $15,000 in prize money, has already attracted interest from balloon pilots from the United States and Japan.
Based on previous balloon festivals in Canowindra, organisers predict the event could attract as many as 4000 visitors to the region and generate tens of thousands of dollars for the local economy.
“Canowindra’s been synonymous with ballooning and is recognised as the balloon capital of Australia,” challenge organiser and chief pilot at Balloon Joy Flights Graham Kerr said.
Smoked Meats
Graham’s recipe for Rare Honey Glazed smoked beef. This is one of the specialty meats that we serve on our ploughman’s lunches at Toms Waterhole Wines.
Use a whole fresh silver-side of beef and cold smoke for eight hours at under 50 degrees Celsius using American oak chips that have been soaked in Toms Waterhole Shiraz for a minimum of twelve months. Baste the outside every hour with wild bush honey. Then raise the temperature of the oven to 100 degrees Celsius and cook until the internal meat temperature reaches 60 degrees for ten minutes. This will give you perfectly rare beef. I use a meat thermometer to gauge the “doneness”.
A bit about smoking meats at home. Search on google for “wood for smoking meats” and you will find numerous sites with lots of info but in Australia, hickory, the traditional smoking wood, is expensive as it is all imported. Of course oak chips are imported also but after the winery is finished with them you won’t pay nearly as much for them as when they are new and unused. The link below has a very detailed description of woods used for smoking around the world. Oak is strong but not overpowering and is a very good wood for beef or lamb. Oak is probably the most versatile of the hard woods.
You may even wish to try this recipe for a your own baked ham for Christmas.
If you would like to try out using our Shiraz soaked U.S. Oak chips order them from our on-line shopping cart.
Cleanskin Wine
Why do people buy cleanskin wines? Well I got to wondering about this…… if there is no label then there is no brand and thus no history so it’s really like a lucky dip as I see it
You see supermarket “no frills” and “black and gold” started out with the cleanskin concept for groceries, except they had to put certain mandatory packaging information on the packet and all of a sudden people started to recognise the packaging and woops you have a brand.
So back to the question….do you buy them because they are cheap, you like a lucky dip or you want to put your own label on it. Maybe you are having a function or a party and don’t care what you serve your friends!
OK what about from the winery’s point of view? Why do winery’s sell cleanskins.?
Now this might start to throw some light on what you the buyer can expect when buying cleanskins.
Excess stock…we made too much of that wine….It’s not selling as well as we had hoped……well the wine really isn’t up to our standards to put our name on it…..the grapes weren’t much good but this is the best we could do…… no-one drinks that style of wine anymore……….there’s a wine glut lets just dump it for the best price we can get……etc..etc..etc
Sometimes wineries that are exporting to several different countries will bottle a wine or a portion of it as cleanskins because they don’t know which label it will be sold under or how the importing country will want it labelled.
Wine labels can cost as much as $1.00 each so untill you have a sure sale why invest another $1.00 a bottle to store it in the warehouse?
So what do you think? Give us your opinion.
Would you buy cleanskins? If so have a look at Toms Waterhole Cleanskins and order on line.
