I love food and wine. Being the hunter-gatherer I am and owning a top shelf winery in Bannockburn, I have been able to eat and drink my way through life. I have discovered that marrying up wine and food properly enhances the flavours in both. The right food can enhance flavor characters in your wine, while adding a new dimension to your food.

Here's a great recipe that goes perfectly with our Pinot Noir. You can try it out or just use it for inspiration.

Recipe:The Best BBQ Lamb with Cauliflower Mash and Roasted Mushrooms

When matching food to wine I don’t like to use specific flavours of that wine in your food. Rather I use foods linked to those flavours, so when you drink the wine with your food they enhance each other.

Lamb Marinade

900 grams lamb rump; 100ml red wine preferably Pinot Noir; 50ml Japanese Soy Sauce; 50ml Dijon Mustard; 1 tbl Black Current concentrate (optional but added touch); 30 ml Olive oil; 2 stalks of fresh thyme.

Mix all ingredients and marinate lamb for at least 2 hours. BBQ on a grill on low or roast in oven at 180 degrees for 30 minutes or until lamb is medium rare.

Let stand for 20 minutes.

Cauliflower Mash

6 medium spuds, chopped; 2 cloves of garlic; ¼ cauliflower; 50 gr butter; 50 ml cream; sprinkle of Parmesan Salt to taste.

Boil potatoes, cauliflower and garlic till soft. Mash through a fine sieve for super smooth. Melt butter and add cream to butter. Mix into spuds till creamy. Salt to taste.

Bake stuffed mushrooms

6 Portabella mushrooms; 2 garlic cloves; crushed zest and juice of 1 lemon; 1 tbl soy sauce; 1 tbl Balsamic; 3tbl olive oil; handful of Parmesan.

Chop out trunk of mushroom and divide all ingredients evenly over inside of mushroom sprinkling the Parmesan last. Bake in barrel or oven at 180 for 20 minutes. Carve lamb against the grain into 1 cm thick slices. Serve with the cauliflower mash and baked mushrooms.

Normally I would make a red wine reduction sauce to go with the lamb, which takes a few hours to make properly. However the Dark Cherries, Plums along with the Mocha and mushroom floor in Wild Earth 20

08 Pinot Noir marry perfectly with the meat. In this case Wild Earth replaces the reduction sauce and becomes part of your meal.

Serves 6

Recipe: Spanish Paella the Wild Earth Way

This year’s recipe was inspired by my friends Allison and Vince. I was never a big fan of Paella. I always found it dry and boring. I attended the Holland’s New Years Eve party last year, where Allison cooked this fantastic Paella that has inspired me for ever. Anything with seafood I love of course, but when I heard traditional Paella is cooked with rabbit, well, the light bulb went on. So on my last trip to the states, I had to acquire yet another toy, a 36inch Paella pan for our Wild Earth Wild food events below our Bannockburn vineyard. So once again we will make good use of our beloved Otago rabbits, wild thyme, my diving and fishing skills and our already well used wine barrel smoker. For our cooking and smoking source we have an abundance of Pinot Noir soaked oak staves. The Wild Earth 2008 matches perfectly with the rabbit and seafood. Serves 10

Stock:

1 leek, 1 large onion, 3 carrots, 3 celery sticks, 6 peppercorns, salt to taste4 cloves of garlic. 2 KG rabbit or chicken carcass,1 400gr tin of tomatoe, 1 bottle of red wine.

Roughly chop all the veggie. Lightly sauté in olive oil till soft. Add the rabbit pieces and sauté till brown. Add the tin of tomatoes then the bottle of wine. Bring to boil and cook for five minutes. Add water till ingredients are covered. Bring to a boil and simmer for 1 hour. Strain stock and discard solids. Shell and de-vein prawns. Add the shells and heads to stock. If the heads are black discard. Bring to boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Strain stock again and discard solids

Paella:

3 sweet tomatoes, 2 red capsicums, 1leek, 3 cloves of garlic, 1 small Fennel bulb,1 cayenne pepper, Zest of 1 lime, 1 tbl paprika, 1 tsp New Mexico chile powder, 1 tsp fresh wild thyme. salt and pepper. 20 Prawns, 10 Mussels,10 Scallops,400gr Calamari strips ,6 rabbit back straps cut into 1 inch pieces, 6 rabbit Maryland. 3 cups of rice, 1 cup of red wine, 6 cups of rabbit stock. A pinch of saffron in the stock.

Smoke the tomatoes, capsicums, fennel and chilli, or roast in oven as an alternative. When cool chop the veggies fine. Wrap the rabbit Maryland in vine leaves and smoke till cooked. Steam the mussels in 1 cup of rabbit stock. Add the finished mussel stock to rabbit stock. Keep mussels in pot with lid on to keep warm.

Heat finished stock in another pot.

Sauté chopped veggies in oil, add rabbit backstraps, lime zest, paprika, chilli powder, thyme and salt and pepper to taste. Add the rice and sauté for 5 minutes. Add the wine and cook for 5 minutes.

Ladle in the warm stock one cup at a time to keep rice covered. When five minutes away from rice being done add prawn meat, scallop meat and calamari.

When the rice is finished put smoked rabbit Maryland and mussels on top of paella in an organized way. Squirt with 1 half of lime.

Serve and enjoy!