The Wine Life Blog

Restaurant-Quality Recipes & Wine Expertise for New Zealand Home Cooks

Welcome to Entertaining—your trusted source for restaurant-quality recipes perfect for sharing with friends. Discover expert wine pairing advice, reviews of New Zealand's best restaurant wine lists, and comprehensive guides on wine storage, varietals, and food pairing techniques.

About Our Food Writer & Wine Curator

Laura Faire is a food writer and hospitality professional with 25 years of experience across New Zealand's culinary landscape, bringing restaurant industry expertise to home entertaining.

Professional Training & Restaurant Experience

After training at Leiths School of Food and Wine in London, Laura worked in acclaimed Auckland restaurants including Craft, Euro, and St Tropez, before expanding into film and television catering and private chef work.

Test Kitchen Management & Recipe Development

Laura managed the Nestlé NZ test kitchens, focusing on packaging and media placement recipes for their brands with marketing and advertising agencies, developing expertise in scaling recipes for commercial success.

Published Food Writer & Media Expert

She moved into food media as a regular on Good Morning Television and food columnist for the Sunday Star Times. Laura has authored two cookbooks under her own name and ghostwritten numerous others for brands working with publishing companies, with her work appearing in Real magazine and countless other publications alongside extensive food styling projects.

Expert Wine Curation Methodology

Now with The Wine List NZ, Laura applies her deep food industry knowledge to wine selection—not through personal tasting, but by researching expert opinions from professional sommelier selections, Wine Orbit, Cameron Douglas MS, and Candace Chow.

Her analytical approach combines test kitchen methodology with industry connections, restaurant wine list analysis, and sales data to identify wines that earn their place through professional validation and restaurant-quality standards, ensuring customers receive exceptional quality.

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Share great times with friends.  Laura

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