January 11-13, 2024

We were greeted with another lovely day the next morning and so were ready for our wine tour experience, with a pickup at the motel at 9:30 am.  Marty had booked the Full-Day Marlborough Wine Tour Including Wine Tasting trip through Viator and we joined five other travelers for what would a fine day of sightseeing and wine tasting.  Our cost for this outing was $$135 per person and as we would all agree at the end of the day, well worth the price charged. 

On this trip, the use of full and half day guided tours would mark a big departure for Joanna and I, as we have traditionally used guidebooks and other tools to fashion our visits to historic and scenic sites.  We would put to rest that time tested method on this trip for a couple of reasons, the first being our lack of transportation.  We would come to rely on guided tours to get us to and from the destinations we wished to see and doing so would in most cases allow for convenient pick up and drop off. 

The second reason would be that we had come to rely on the Rick Steves (St. Steves) guidebooks for our Europe adventures and they all included detailed guided walking and tourist site tours.  The guidebooks we chose for this trip did not have that level of detail, so in any case we would likely have needed to hire a guide once we reached the tour site by our own method of transportation. 

Finally, as we would experience, the many full day tours we took would have been difficult to manage on our own and although we spent many hours riding in multi-passenger vans, there was often a running commentary by the driver/guide that filled the time and provided so much more information than we would have discovered on our own.  And when you add in secured tour site reservations, local eating spot recommendations, and often early access entry to some of the sites, in the end taking these types of guided tours changed our minds about their ultimate value. 

Our wine guide picked us up at the motel and we took off south from there, a pleasant drive of about 30-minutes to get to our first stop of the day, Forrest Wines near the small town of Renwick, itself a few miles outside of Blenheim and smack dab in the heart of the famous Marlborough region of New Zealand.  I won’t go into any great detail about the wineries, the tastings, or the time we spent sitting on wooden stools with our noses in glasses, twirling and swirling.  Needless to say, one comes to this region for the Sauvignon Blancs grown and bottled here and we were not disappointed at any or our stops.  One lesson we did learn early is holding a glass of wine up to the light to check its color isn’t the way to do it.  Instead hold it against a plain white piece of paper which will more fully allow for the color to be shown.  And it works. 

Next one up was Jackson Estate where the highlight was a visit to their wine cellar where they host group tastings and other gatherings.  From there we landed at Saint Clair Family Estate Vineyard Kitchen.  This would be our lunch stop and a fine one it would be as we each got to select a main course, for Joanna that would be the Seafood Linguini (Marlborough mussels, white fish and prawns in a light caper and citrus cream with fresh herb oil, and garden herbs) and for me, the catch of the day which was a Pan Seared Gurnard (white, firm-fleshed fish) on a bed of creamy potato salad.  Absolutely delicious. 

There were some other minor courses involved which I can’t recall, but all went well with the wines we were served, leaving us full and quite happy.  We lingered there a bit after eating, and then jumped in the van for a short trip to Makana Confections to watch them making chocolate candy and where to no one’s surprise, we cleaned them out of a fair amount of inventory. 

Our next stop was the Vines Village, a collection of small retail outlets including the Whitehaven Wines Cellar Door and Tasting Room (we didn’t do a tasting here), a café, gifts at the Larder & Giftware, local cheese & whiskies at Cheese & Cheers, fabric and craft supplies at The Quilters Barn and gin merchandise and all things gin at Roots Gin Shack.  A few folks stopped in at Cone & Shake for ice cream while Joanna and I split a coffee, a good idea to help us get through the rest of the afternoon. 

I did notice a sign at the Village stating it was a stop on the Ride the Golden Mile, which is a community of cycle-friendly cellar doors, accommodations, and bike hires open in the Rapaura/Renwick area of Marlborough.  The idea being you rent a bike at a local shop, or bring your own, and you ride a circuit to become a Golden Mile Champion by visiting ten destinations (including Forrest Estate Wines) to collect all 10 stamps and claim the title as a ‘Golden Mile Champion’.  I’m not sure I could hit ten tastings on a bike and survive the journey, but apparently many have lived to tell the tale. 

Our last stop of the day was FROMM Winery, known for all of their Vineyards being fully certified BioGro organic.  In addition, they practice Dry Farming where instead of irrigating young vines once a day (the industry norm is five liters per vine per day throughout the growing season) their young vines are watered just once a week or fortnight, for between four and six hours.  This sends the roots deeper in search for water and means that over time the vines can be weaned off irrigation completely.

Although the drippers are left in place in case of a very dry year, they have not used irrigation on the older vines since 2004 and over 60% of their vines survive with no irrigation.  They believe that means the fruit is getting its flavor from the land and gives each single vineyard a sense of place.  We had a nice time here, the gentleman serving us knowledgeable and friendly as we enjoyed all of the wines we tasted. 

And that would complete our day out in Marlborough country, an excursion well worth the price charged and returning to the motel, we snacked on food in the room and continued our efforts to drain the contents of our home-made bar, a goal we weren’t able to accomplish, but not for lack of trying.  We looked forward to our next day’s journey, a scenic train ride down the coast to Christchurch, our next to last stop of our time in New Zealand.  Stay tuned for more to come. 

Links

Full-Day Marlborough Wine Tour: https://www.viator.com/tours/Picton/Full-Day-Marlborough-Wine-Tour-Including-Wine-Tasting/d4769-26702P2?m=63070&nid=VR.66d91512-8d7f-45d6-acc2-6d5ee737daef.VT_EMAIL_TRV

Forrest Wines: https://www.forrest.co.nz/

Jackson Estate: https://www.jacksonestate.co.nz/

Saint Clair Family Estate Vineyard: https://saintclair.co.nz/pages/vineyard-kitchen

The Vines Village: https://www.thevinesvillage.co.nz/

Ride the Golden Mile: https://www.facebook.com/ridethegoldenmilemarlborough/

FROMM Winery: https://frommwinery.co.nz/