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1215 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
13 hours ago

It’s Riddle Time – You Might Need an Extra Cup of Coffee!

Riddler from The Neighbourly Riddler

Nobody has ever walked this way. Which way is it?

Do you think you know the answer to our daily riddle? Don't spoil it for your neighbours! Simply 'Like' this post and we'll post the answer in the comments below at 2pm.

Want to stop seeing riddles in your newsfeed?
Head here and hover on the Following button on the top right of the page (and it will show Unfollow) and then click it. If it is giving you the option to Follow, then you've successfully unfollowed the Riddles page.

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3 days ago

Poll: Do you think NZ should ban social media for youth?

The Team from Neighbourly.co.nz

The Australian Prime Minister has expressed plans to ban social media use for children.

This would make it illegal for under 16-year-olds to have accounts on platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X.
Social media platforms would be tasked with ensuring children have no access (under-age children and their parents wouldn’t be penalised for breaching the age limit)
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Do you think NZ should follow suit? Vote in our poll and share your thoughts below.

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Do you think NZ should ban social media for youth?
  • 84.5% Yes
    84.5% Complete
  • 14.1% No
    14.1% Complete
  • 1.5% Other - I'll share below
    1.5% Complete
1514 votes
1 hour ago

𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐒: 𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐁𝐔𝐒 𝐎𝐑 𝐁𝐔𝐒𝐄𝐒 𝐎𝐍 𝟏𝟕-𝟏𝟖-𝟏𝟗 𝐍𝐎𝐕 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒!

Frances from Mount Eden

Auckland Transport is dropping the Mt Eden/Epsom/southern area from the OuterLink bus route as from Sunday 17 November 2024.

If your bus trip is impacted by this change in the OuterLink bus route (eg, if you have to catch a different bus or if you have to interchange buses once or twice) and you are not sure what to do, we urge you to catch your new bus (or buses) on Sunday 17 November, Monday 18 November and Tuesday 19 November.

This is because Auckland Transport will have Ambassadors out and about on those THREE days to help people with their new bus journeys! (AT may then have ambassadors out for an extra day or two, but this will depend on perceived need).

You can already plan your new journey on the Auckland Transport web site. The Journey Planner tool has been updated (but make sure you input a date from 17 November onwards). Or you can contact Auckland Transport with any enquiries as you would usually do, eg, phone 09 366 6400 or live chat at at.govt.nz... etc.

The Mt Eden Village Business Association knows that the southern half of the OuterLink bus route is heavily used by school children, the elderly, people for whom English is a second language, and other vulnerable groups. So, if you do see anyone who is confused by these changes, please be as helpful as you can. Thank you!

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