Marlborough Wines

A cool, grey day here today (all the locals moaning about how cold it is) - a good day for a chauffeured tour around some of the vineyards around Blenheim.  Our first stop was at Te Whare Ra where we were shown around an organic, bio-dynamic vineyard and winery by one of the owners.  This was followed by a tasting of 7 of their wines (5 white and 2 red).  The surprise package was that they make a dry riesling and, whilst we would normally avoid it, this one was certainly worth trying and some views as to this grape type were blown away.  Next we went to Auntsfield, which is on the site of Marlborough's first vineyard and has something of an interesting history - another wander around followed, this time, by 5 wines to taste (the best being a Pinot Noir Rose).  Then we went to Wither Hills - the winery there is fairly new but the estate is large and they supply wines to the UK with Tesco being a stockist.

We tried 6 wines there with each of our favourites being a white (Ingrid a Pinot Gris and Pete the dry Riesling), but the most interesting was one that has only been released for 6 weeks - a sparkling Gerwurtztraminer - which was much better than it sounds!  We had lunch here overlooking the vineyard.  Just as well to have some food at this point as, from here, we were of to Saint Clair vineyard (one of the bigger family owned wineries).  Again, we tried half a dozen different wines - they rate their sauvignon blanc, but neither of us were particularly keen, and the chardonnay which was meant to be 'lightly oaked' but was still a bit claggy to our tastes.  Their Shiraz was better than average though.  From there it was on to a chocolate factory where Ingrid had dessert by way of the tastings on offer and then to another tiny vineyard called Seresin and a couple making organic, bio-diverse wines and trying something different.

Again we tried an array of wines and, perhaps even more interesting, their own olive oil where they cold press the olives with citrus fruit (they had lime, lemon and orange to taste) and they were all very clean and tasty.  We finished our tour at a vineyard call TerraVin, which had six wines to taste, the best being the two Pinot Noirs (a 'house' wine and their 'reserve' wine).  Had we drunk everything poured for us, we would be struggling - there were some who do the wine tour on a bike, which has the makings of being quite dangerous!  We kept taking on the water and poured away what was not wholly to our taste so we survived and, we are sure, will be ready to do battle with a bottle of something at dinner time.  Now time to pack again - this time for a hiking day and a kayaking day.  We are unlikely to be able to get internet access on Friday or Saturday and, if we can't, we will let you know how the Queen Charlotte Track is come Sunday.  Have a good weekend all.