Drink Eat Love

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Thumbs Up - Down Under by Jon Porter

  

My dad, Jon Porter, recently spent a week in New Zealand. I asked him to write about his day trip on Waiheke Island off the coast of Auckland.

Time changes all things, but some things get better over time.  Children grow up, global events can be placed into perspective and wine improves, especially wine producers.  Nearly 30 years ago, I took my first trip down under to what the native Maori’s called Aotearoa, “the land of the long white clouds,” now known as New Zealand.  This incredibly beautiful nation of some 4.2 million people, 40 million sheep and 10 million dairy cattle, is also now famous for its wines.  This was not the case 30 years ago on my first visit.  The only wine worth drinking was something called MacWilliam’s Cabernet, which was overly juicy and tannic, but for the price, not bad.  New Zealand is also the first place I encountered that had wines in a box.  The white wines of the country were overly sweet and best used as paint thinner.