“Where are you from then?” said one of two female friends.

Neither of the ladies batted an eyelid. It all made perfect sense to them.

“We come here as often as we can,” they remarked. “We’ve been hoping to get snowed in this winter, so we can stay over too – but it’s hasn’t happened. Yet.”

I had been wanting to visit here for a while, but feared it not quite living up to the high expectations I had for some reason developed for the place.

Perhaps it was because every time I had driven past I had always noticed the beautifully-kept vineyards. From those vines Three Choirs produces some of England’s finest wine. Perhaps that very thought had put me in awe. Wine can have that effect.

Certainly I feared my hopes would come crashing down as soon as I left the charming court yard entrance and stepped through the restaurant doors.

It was a cool, clear evening with bright skies and diners seated two to tables which would take four at a push, transfixed by the quintessentially English scenery through the brace of French doors.

Soft music played in the background. We enjoyed a glass of Three Choirs’ own May Hill wine (£5 for 125ml) as we relaxed in the lounge area before being guided to our table. A bowl of bread was offered – beautiful, chewy, homemade-tasting chunks and complementary tumbler of soup. I had feared – again I don’t know why – something pretentious. Nothing of the sort.

Starters arrived – baked Camembert with honey and rosemary, molten yellow inside its white jacket (£15). We shared it, failing to convince ourselves we really didn’t need to finish it even after the tomato chutney and hot toast had gone. It was delicious.

My seabass, dauphinoise potatoes and watercress (£19.50) was really very good, if perhaps a little salty. I really didn’t mind.

My partner’s venison – her first time – delightful. With buttered celeriac, onion marmalade, red wine reduction (£18.50).

The simply-delivered menu was easy to navigate and delivered variety without any fancy culinary pomp or ceremony. Every glance up from the table drew eyes to the gentle view-to-die-for, across the tops of rolling Gloucestershire fields.

Coffee was served in the lounge area with a trio of complimentary petit fours. We drew it out as much as we could.

Sometimes the atmosphere of a place and the calm, efficient staff, works a magic which lifts your spirits and rests it gently down somewhere else, positive and at peace. Appetite satisfied, conversation unnecessary. If you wanted to risk topping that, you could always take a stroll among the vines.

Andy Merrell

Location: Newent

Food: Simple and perfectly presented

Atmosphere: Relaxing and calm

Price: Starters around £5.75, mains from £15, desserts from £6.50

Service: Dedicated, attentive and observant

The caveat here is that no matter the season, no matter the cuisine, you should drink the wines that give you the most pleasure. That said, there are certain aspects of summer dining that are elevated by certain wines.

First and foremost is the heat. Heavier red wines can seem dull and overpowering in warmer weather because alcohol and tannin tend to stand out as the ambient temperature climbs. You may want to stick with that big, bold cabernet when serving up a thick steak, and that’s fine. But I would put a chill on the wine first. Ten minutes in an ice bucket will do wonders for a tannic red wine on a hot day.

The alternative is something lighter, such as Chianti classico, barbera or a red-Rhone blend (these are wines made from a blend of grapes prominent in France’s Rhone Valley, such as syrah, grenache, mourvedre and carignan). The beauty of these wines, and the reason they go so well with grilled meats, is their savory character, which pairs nicely with the smoky, earthy aromas from the grill.

Grilled fish and vegetables often generate a thirst for summer white wines, and there again a savory characteristic can be important. Sauvignon blanc can be a star in this arena. Many are pungent and savory, with nuances of dried herbs, and often a slightly vegetal note goes well with — surprise, surprise — grilled veggies. Sauvignon blanc that tends to show more citrus fruit aroma plays especially well with fish.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t recommend chardonnay with this type of cuisine, but Chablis (100 percent chardonnay from the coolest, most northern district of Burgundy) is produced largely without the use or influence of oak barrels and thus is a mineral- and fruit-driven chardonnay that will have the weight on the palate to handle firm fish such as grilled mahi-mahi and swordfish.

For salmon lovers, the grill and a bottle of earthy pinot noir, whether from Burgundy or the New World, are an ideal match that is truly crowd-pleasing.

Though pinot noir typically won’t be as tannic as a big cabernet, it too will benefit from a slight chill on Accessories.

BEST VALUE

If I was organised, like my 92-year-old father-in-law, I would make feijoa wine using the last remaining feijoas on the tree. My friends don’t want my feijoas and, instead, have been offering me pumpkins from their gardens.

These are gratefully received, as I have put my garden to bed for the winter. My own pumpkins have been eaten, my final two lettuces are awaiting harvest and the rhubarb and coriander are only growing slowly. The basil has given up and I am about to put a frost cover on my avocado tree.

I enjoy gardening, especially reaping the produce. I love the sweet taste explosion in my mouth from a warm cherry tomato, biting into the first plum of the season or digging potatoes for Christmas Day. According to my husband, the potatoes that I grow are the best he has ever tasted, even better than his father-in-law’s.

Although my garden is resting, other local suppliers are still going strong. I am not worried about future supplies and will simply revert to what is produced by others. In Nelson we are spoilt for choice.

It is imperative that produce be fresh, and our local markets get this so right.

The Saturday market and the Wednesday one in Fashion Island are havens for fruit and vegetables.

Taste treats this year have included blueberries, king purple plums, giant figs, organic apples, hazelnuts and the cheapest red peppers imaginable.

Each week, I frequent “the egg lady”, where I exchange $6 and my empty carton for a full one.

Fruit and vegetables don’t get more fresh than those from Fresh2U, run by Wolfgang Mann.

If you are on his list, he will put together a box of seasonal produce sourced from local organic growers and sustainable farms and deliver it to your door.

As a friend says, “It just tastes better”. Wolfgang also has a stall at the Saturday market in Montgomery Square.

Further afield, we have the Stoke and Motueka markets. The Motueka Sunday Market operates from 8am till 1pm, rain or shine, in the Decks Reserve car park, behind the i-Site visitor information centre. With its family-oriented, friendly atmosphere, it’s a very popular weekend activity and provides great fresh produce bargains.

Other out-of-town foraging experiences include 185 Main Rd (Hope), Berrylands, Todd’s (Appleby) and Richard’s Orchard apple stall on the Coastal Highway. At the latter are heritage eating and cooking apples with names like belle de boskoop, akane, bramley, cox’s orange pippin and gravenstein. In season, this stall also has pears, plums, greengages, quinces, damsons and zwetschgen plums. The stall relies on an honesty box.

Free is always good and my friends are generous when they have a lemon or feijoa glut. Unfortunately, this usually occurs when I have a similar problem.

Recent plantings in the Grampians means there will soon be figs, persimmons and walnuts, as well as more feijoas, to fortify me while walking. Cycling along the Railway Reserve yields blackberries. As the Tasman Great Taste Trail develops, I am sure there will be more goodies to sample, such as wilding apple trees or maybe a gooseberry bush up towards Ngatimoti.

Last month, the Nelson City Council held Heritage Week and the theme was “harvest”. I picked up some pamphlets about edible walks in Ranui Reserve, Stoke Railway Reserve and Woodstock Reserve. Fruit and nut trees that are producing (nutting) right now are quince, citrus, almond, persimmon, walnut and hazelnut. There may even be a few late feijoas still around. Pick up a brochure from the council and get foraging.

Homemade delicacies are becoming fashionable. This is driven by a desire to know what is in food, as well as to taste good. I am pleased to be part of this trend.

Without wanting to sound immodest, my homemade preserves are great. My children are loyal tasters and say that bought stuff is never as good as mine, apart from Wattie’s tomato sauce, of course. Now that I have my own preserves, I get huge satisfaction from giving a jar of my ginger and pear jam, or beetroot pickle, to friends.

In return, I now have homemade tomato soup and raspberry jam on my shelves.

My tomato crop was terrible this year. My husband said that was due to not enough good-quality compost (the management of which is his job) and a neighbour said I needed a source of heritage seed. He has some and I am about to drop around with a jar of spiced plum chutney in exchange.

Although the purchase price has not been revealed the property was listed with Surterre Properties of Newport Beach for $29.5 million.

The media mogul tweeted at the end of last week: “About to celebrate buying beautiful small vineyard right in LA. Great wine, Moraga, owned by great Angelino, Tom Jones. Time cover,1961!”

The estate currently produces a red wine, which is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with small amounts of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

The estate’s white wine is produced from Sauvignon Blanc grapes. The first commercial vintages were 1989 for Moraga Red Wine and 1998 for Moraga White Wine. The vineyard produces between 300 and 600 cases a year with the red wine retailing for $125 a bottle and the white wine at $65 a bottle.

Murdoch has bought the property from Thomas Jones, the former CEO of Northrop Grumman, who has owned it for 30 years. Jones bought the vineyard from Victor Fleming the director of Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.

Jim Kline, the estate agent who is handled the sale told the Wine Spectator: “I think he’s very interested in learning the wine business and carrying on Moraga the way that it has been. I think it’s something that intrigues him. And it’s a spectacular property.”

Late spring and early summer are when these wines come into their own. As the temperature rises and the evenings draw out, our palates naturally lean toward lighter styles. We find ourselves heading to the fish counter, preparing salads and dusting down the garden furniture for supper al fresco. This is when Pinot Noirs, particularly those from Volnay, are easy to enjoy and digest.

Made in a delicate, elegant style, they are diametrically opposed to the fuller red wines made from grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. Those wines, often produced in regions where the climate is warmer than in Burgundy, define themselves by their intensity. Dark in color and high in tannin, fruit and alcohol, they envelope the taste buds with their extracted flavors.

Volnay, on the other hand, offers a more nuanced experience. At tastings, I often find myself jotting down descriptors such as pale in color with floral aromatics of violet and rose, and a fresh acidity. These wines appeal to those who prefer the delicate tones of a string quartet to the bombast of a Beethoven symphony.

The village itself can date its wine-growing lineage to the 11th century, and by the 17th century, its wines were noted as some of the best and certainly the lightest in Burgundy. Today, the village comprises around 213 hectares of vineyards, with 34 premiers crus. (In Burgundy, it isn’t the producer or property that is classified but the vineyard.)

Premier cru is the second tier of quality, behind grand cru. Volnay doesn’t possess any grand cru vineyards and, lying in the Côte de Beaune, it also finds itself in the least fashionable end of the Côte d’Or. This is both Volnay’s problem and its advantage. The advantage for the consumer is that the price of its wines hasn’t run away with the rest of the fine-wine market; for producers, however, it means they can only look on enviously as their neighbors enjoy price inflation.

The 2011s have just come on the market. Like the 2010 and the yet to be released 2012, the overriding characteristic of the vintage is a very small crop. Some vignerons say such is the paucity of these vintages that the three of them are the equivalent of one crop. Domaines Henri Boillot, Michel Lafarge, Comtes Lafon, Montille, Rossignol and Voillot are producers to look out for.

In recent vintages, Guillaume d’Angerville at Marquis d’Angerville has taken the estate biodynamic, which has added a little freshness, elegance and more precision to his wines. These are exciting times at this estate, with a notable upswing in quality. His Taillepieds and Cru Clos des Ducs Monopole command nothing like the price tag of Vosne-Romanée, but offer wines that are complex, refined and fresh, with a hidden intensity. A few years ago I tasted a 1976 Volnay Clos des Chênes from Domaine Michel Lafarge. Defying its age, it displayed bright fruit, crispness and acidity. It was nothing short of spectacular.

A closer look at global wine trends over the last few years reveals a great deal about today’s Chinese consumer market and its evolving growth drivers.

Growth of the U.S. vs. the Chinese Wine Market: While the U.S. wine market is vibrant and growing, the Chinese wine market is even more so.

United States: According to the latest Vinexpo findings, in 2011 the U.S. became the world’s leading wine-consuming nation in volume and value. From 2010 to 2011 U.S. wine consumption jumped 4.5%, a record-growth.

During 2012, U.S. wine sales were up 2%, while European consumption remained stable.

China: On the other hand, in 2012 Chinese wine consumption was up 9%. China has now surpassed the U.S. as the third-largest red wine consuming country.

In 2011, the value of the Chinese wine market grew by 24.1%, according to an April 2013 MarketLine industry profile. The volume of Chinese wine market grew by 22.9% in 2011 to reach a total volume of 1,318.4 million liters.

In 2016, the Chinese wine market is forecast to have a volume of 2,546.6 million liters, an increase of 93.2% since 2011.

How the Chinese Consumer Buys Wine: Two major trends clearly show the future of the wine trade in China. These trends reflect concurrent nascent developments around the globe.

Mass retailers: Mass retailers are now and will continue to expand as the major sources of wine purchases. The corner wine shop is rapidly disappearing.

Wine consumption will be more and more “off-trade.” Recent data show that wine consumed away from the premises, such as bar and restaurant, accounted for 71.7 percent of all volumes worldwide.

For couples who love the mountains, roughing it, and cooking the day’s catch over a camp fire, retiring to the tent for the night with Snap Dragon Red Wine is a good idea.  The wine makes for romance and pairs well with burgers and other foods best prepared over an open flame.  If lounging at home beside the pool and enjoying that expensive patio set you just bought, you might want something refreshing, light and fruity.  Designed for days when you want to sit in the breeze, Butterfly Kiss Pinot Grigio is just what you need.  It also mixes well in “Pinot Greeg” cocktails.

In celebration of its 25th anniversary, Chicago’s Goose Island Beer Co. will launch a new extra special bitter (ESB). Goose Island’s ESB Anniversary Ale is brewed with Maris Otter malt and dry-hopped with East Kent Goldings, resulting in flavors similar to the English ales that originally inspired founder John Hall. The ale will launch on draft and in six-packs of 12-ounce bottles in major cities across 18 states.

Burgundy producer Domaine Ponsot is adopting new eProvenance second generation technology to create “Intelligent Cases,” which consumers can use to track provenance history of their cases. eProvenance is a Franco-American company whose technology monitors the temperature history of a wine case by uploading data to “the cloud,” allowing collectors to access a log of temperature data in order to verify the condition of the wines. The Intelligent Cases data can be read by smartphones and tablets and feature a 15-year battery life for long-term monitoring of temperature conditions.

The Alsace Wine Route is celebrating its 60th anniversary with a year-long calendar of events. Some of the event highlights include the Alsace Wine Fair, with musical performances by MIKA and Snoop Lion (formerly Snoop Dogg), alongside 350 exhibitors. Visitors to the trail will also experience a wine fair virtually every month of the year, while in June, the Vineyard Marathon snakes through the region. Created in 1953, the 105 mile-long trail is comprised of 70 wine-producing villages and nearly 1000 producers.

Rex Pickett, author of wine-soaked novel Sideways, which inspired the Oscar-winning movie of the same name, has released—you guessed it—a Pinot Noir. The 2011 Pinot Noir from Oregon’s Willamette Valley is called Ne Plus Ultra, “the highest point” in Latin. “When I decided to produce my own wine, I knew immediately it would be a Pinot Noir, the grape variety so rhapsodically celebrated in Sideways,” Pickett said in a statement. Pickett collaborated with Oregon winemakers Drew Voit and Darcy Pendergrass on the project. Ne Plus Ultra is made from grapes grown at high altitude on Laurelwood soils at Twelve Oaks Estate Vineyard in the Chehalem Mountains AVA and clocks in at 13% abv. In addition to Sideways and releasing his Pinot Noir, Pickett also authored the follow-up to the iconic novel, titled Vertical, which sent characters Miles and Jack to the International Pinot Festival in Willamette Valley. In anticipation of the third installment in the Sideways trilogy, which will see Miles in Chile, Pickett recently returned from a research trip to the country.

Some of the most exciting wines being made in Oregon today are Chardonnays. These are not your grandma’s butter bombs; they’re taut, lean wines with terrific mouthfeel.

“You have to love making Chardonnay to make good Chardonnay,” says Marcus Goodfellow of Matello Wines. “There’s a lot more work than with red wine.”

Oregonians are not shy about hand work, as long as the end product is cool. And Chardonnay is ripe — or should I say slightly underripe? — for the same sort of hip revival as fixed-gear bikes.

Chardonnay may be common in California, but in Oregon, where the climate is more like Burgundy, only 4.7% of the vines are Chardonnay, compared to 61.6% Pinot Noir. Hipness has something to do with that. When most of that planting was done, Pinot Noir outside Burgundy was an obscure wine geek’s obsession, while Chardonnay had established itself as the innocuous white wine of political fund-raisers.

Yet anywhere that can grow great Pinot should be able to make great Chard.