There's whisky in the jar

There are few better reasons to visit a town than to taste the local produce, whatever it may be. Indeed, aside from wining and dining, what other reasons are there??  


Okay, there's splendid scenery, sedate or death defying activities - depending on your proclivities -meeting new people and so on, but in my case at least, these tend to take place against a backdrop of gastronomic pursuits.  


Case in point Oamaru: a small rural town in north Otago which, on the face of it, has little to recommend it other than as the home of the Denheath custard square  immortalised in this blog two years ago.  Yes, it has taken me that long to make the pilgrimage.

Once upon a time Oamaru had more taverns and brothels than any other settlement in the country - obviously a fun place to visit in the late 1800s.   We learn this and more about the development and heritage of Oamaru in a fact filled 10 minute video at the information centre.  While we do pay cursory homage to the Victorian historic stone architecture, our attention turns to more edifying activities. 

Duck confit at Riverstone

Here are my top reasons to visit Oamaru:

Eating at Riverstone Kitchen where chef Bevan Smith creates fabulous plates of food such as the Duck confit on char grilled brussels sprouts (more delicious than you might think!) and pureed jerusalem artichoke.

While Bevan builds the reputation of the restaurant as a dining destination, his mother is building a castle not far away. True. 

Dot Smith, aka Queen of Riverstone Castle, has always wanted to live in a castle so now she is building one. No half measures for Dot - there will be a moat with drawbridge, a secret passageway and yes, a dungeon - possibly for those only remotely less eccentric than Dot. 

Dot's castle under construction. photo Philip Matthews, Stuff.co.nz

 But good on her for following her dream. I may even stay there when she opens one wing as a bed and breakfast.  Especially if it means I can eat all my meals at Riverstone Kitchen.

Tasting the range at Whitestone Cheese Factory which credits the favour of its cheeses to the "local milk produced on sweet limestone country".  I have to agree the flavours are clear, clean and tangy, so much so we spend a minor fortune (but not enough for a castle) on hunks of delicious Highland Blue and Five Forks 50-50, a combo of goat and cow milk that is creamy and nutty and perfect in a beetroot and walnut salad.

But the title of this blog is about whisky, a drink more typically associated with Scotland.  

There is quite a history behind New Zealand whisky but here's the short version. Leaving aside the efforts of early Scottish settlers in the 1800s, the Baker family established a distillery in Dunedin in 1974.  (An 18 year old at that time I remember clearly - or not so clearly - the two brands they produced: Wilsons and 45 South.)  Bought out by Canadian distiller Seagrams in the 1980s the company flourished and produced the highly regarded single malt Lammerlaw. Seagrams sold on to Australian brewer Fosters in 1997, and Fosters mothballed operations taking the stills to Fiji to make rum. 

Oamaru's historic Victorian precinct - chilly in winter

The New Zealand Whisky Company bought the last 443 barrels of mainly Lammerlaw malt and have had a merry old time maturing the product for the past 20 years.  Situated in a bondstore in the Loan and Mercantile Building in Oamaru's heritage precinct on the harbour, it is a most delectable way to spend a couple of hours on a cold winter afternoon. 


We taste our way through several styles (variously aged) of international award winning whisky - yes it's true - the company has been entering the World Whisky Awards and racking up gold medals from here to Scotland and back.  As we look the types to enjoy a dram or three the local manager invites us upstairs to the bondstore to check out the barrel stocks. They are kind enough to bottle a malt that wasn't in the retail store for us. As these are also exceptionally rare drams, the medals are not the only things racking up, and we stagger away having spent almost enough for a castle drawbridge on rare whisky.

Prohibition stopped beer brewing in Oamaru in 1905 and it has taken over 100 years for it to return.  Former local boy Phillip Scott moved his Scotts Brewing Company home to Oamaru from Auckland in late 2013. As he shows us around the brewery which can produce 5,000 litres of beer a day,  he describes plans to landscape out the front (they have set up in the old railways goods yards on the harbour) and create an outdoor area that will spill into the weekend Farmers' market.  Despite the June chill and a streetscape so empty you could fire a champagne cork down it without causing bodily injury, it is easy to imagine more vibrant summer weekends down by the harbour. 

The small harbour of Oamaru

In fact it is easy to imagine lingering around Oamaru for quite some time, not least to continue the tasting experiences, but we know there is more to the town and the area.  I have only briefly mentioned the beautiful Victorian stone buildings, of which there are more than a few; there are two penguin colonies where you can watch little blue penguins or their yellow eyed cousins waddle up to their nesting boxes at dusk every evening; there's wineries up the Waitaki river; the beautiful Waitaki itself.  And I must mention Oamaru is where we would have ended had we cycled the full Ocean to Alps as described previously in this blog. 

 We bring our bikes in the hope of doing more of the ride but the  weather was against us for most of the time. We manage a short ride up through the Botanic Gardens - again, most likely very picturesque in summer - and along the tail end of the cycle way.  Besides, there was too much else to do - all that local produce! 

Harvesting the bitter fruit - what to do with olives

Living on a vineyard the biggest and most important harvest of the year is, of course, the grapes. Once that is out of the way and we heave a massive sigh of relief (until the whole cycle starts again) and look at harvesting and curing our olives - and they must be cured. If you have ever eaten a raw olive you know they are bitterer than lover scorned. 

We have only half a dozen or so olive trees in three different varieties, however just which varieties remains a mystery as I lost the labels before recording the names.  Most years we have more fruit than we need for curing and preserving but nowhere near enough for olive oil - more on that later.  I didn't weight the yield from our few trees this year, but I suspect  seven to eight kilos would be a generous guess.   

In the past I have cured them using the water or brine method.  This is very straightforward and means soaking them in water or brine, which needs changing daily, for about 30 days to extract said bitterness.  After draining the final time, the now more tasty olives can be bottled in a 10% brine solution.  At this stage it is possible to add chillies, various spices, lemon peel or whatever else tickles your taste buds. 

This year I experiment with a couple of different methods, drying  the olives instead of soaking them.

olives colour change on ripening

I stand to be corrected on this, but my understanding is green and black olives are the same; it is all a matter of ripening. The olives shown above all came from the same tree and show how the colour develops.  I find the best stage for brining is as they change from green to the slightly purplish colour - if they get too ripe they become soft in the brining process. I don't know about you but when I bite into an olive a want a firm texture, not mush.

from the dehydrator, then coated in oil

Having said that I pick ripe but firm black olives for drying  - I put some in a food dehydrator and the others aside for salting.

I run the dehydrator for 24 hours then, having to go out of town, trust the hunter-gatherer to judge when they are ready.  "Job done" he said. I think  these are still a little bitter and need more drying, but he says he likes them - I guess he has to!

salt cured before cleaning, coating in oil and bottling

The salting method is my new favourite, not just because it takes the least effort.  It gives a great result. Completely cover the olives in sea salt (though I used ordinary table salt this year as I didn't have enough sea salt) and let the salt draw out the bitter juices. If the salt becomes too wet, replace it with fresh salt.  I leave these for about three weeks, rinse off the salt and dry the olives again before tossing them in olive oil.  They will keep in the fridge for 6 months, though I doubt they'll last that long as they are delicious.


Olive oil is a whole different kettle of fish - or olives in this case. You need tonnes to get any meaningful yield. Unlike grapes, which cropped at a very high rate this year, the olive trees around the district were variable in yield.  One of our neighbours doesn't bother harvesting her trees so we raid those and join forces with other contacts who have olives but in short supply. 

The method of choice for collecting vast quantities of olives is by a frenzied whacking of the branches with long sticks in what must look like a Fawlty Towers sketch.   It is very effective and  the fruit falls onto tarpaulins spread underneath,  then is transferred to large bins for transportation to the press. On a couple of tree-thrashing days we harvest about 800 kilos over three properties (plus a couple of meagre kilos from our "grove".  This gave us a surprisingly good yield of 15% so all in all we had over 100 litres to share out. 

The colour, taste and smell of fresh olive oil bear little resemblance to the imported oils you find in supermarkets.  

fresh home grown olive oil

If this blog were scratch'n'sniff you would be able to scrape your fingernails on the photo and inhale the heady aroma of freshly mown grass  - just what you want on your salad!

So, you see, with the right treatment even the most bitter fruit becomes palatable.