If there's one thing I hate more than that jelly stuff that develops on the bottom of cooked chicken when you put it in the fridge, it's being told that I'm too old and unfit to try something new. So the other day when I was in Queenstown, I decided that rather than sitting around in the luxurious confines of my hotel, I would hoist myself up to Coronet Peak and learn how to snowboard.
Buoyed by my decision to tackle a new challenge, I went out to experience an evening of champagne and food matching courtesy of the good people at Veuve Clicquot. I'll go along, I thought. But it's unlikely they'll be able to teach me anything I don't already know. A bit of crayfish, the odd oyster maybe. We'll throw around the concepts of pairing the crisp, mineral, yeasty flavours of champagne with rich seafood such as scallops, but Southland venison with savoy cabbage and horopito? What the blazes?
At a cosy hole-in-the-wall restaurant called The Bunker we were served a perfectly rare chunk of strip loin with a glass of 2004 Veuve Clicquot Rosé Brut and much as I tried to turn my nose up, the combination was just ... wow. The wine had begun to develop a rich - but not sweet - strawberry shortcake character, with just a whiff of roasted nuts and smoke. It wrapped itself around that venison like a fizzy pashmina. Red meat and pink champagne, who'd have thought.
Next morning I zoomed up the mountain, grabbed a board, boots and some rather unflattering snowproof clothes; said no to the offer of a helmet (more fool I) and set off for the beginner slopes. How hard could it be? Turns out snow can be very hard. You see, in my head I'm still 17, singing along to Sonic Youth and able to jump on a skateboard and tick-tack my way around town no trouble at all. So anyway, seven shoulder-ripping, knee-skinning, hip-bruising hours later, I managed to prove that I am, in fact, too old and unfit. But I did try something new. For seven hours. Without giving up.
What I also tried at lunch (before the stiffness set in) was a cheese roll. Southland sushi, they call it, with a glass of champagne. Never in a million years would I have predicted that a flute of France's finest would be magic with a rolled up slice of white bread stuffed with cheese and chopped onion.