NZ: Marlborough Wine Tasting, Vineyards

On Sunday, I was up at 6:30am to catch my, now daily, morning bus from Picton to Blenheim. I actually thought I missed the bus as the driver pulled away from the stop and drove right past me about 2 minutes before it was supposed to leave. I gave him a wave/stop sign and he just waved and kept driving! He was the same driver I had on Saturday morning and evening, so I knew he recognised me.

Blenheim at 8:30 on a Sunday morning is a ghost town, and I was hard up to find a place with some coffee and breakfast, but once I did, I splurged on a large eggs benedict. I had a bus tour booked to take me around to four Marlborough Vineyards, but I didn't know which ones they would be until the driver gave us the day's itinerary. I was very pleased to learn that the first stop would be a barrel room tasting lead by the winemaker at Nautilus, the vineyard where I had my favourite red from the festival!

We had a leisurely tasting of 6 Nautilus wines, my favourites being: non-vintage Brut Sparkling wine, 2008 Sauvignon Blanc, and of course, the 2007 Four Barriques Pinot Noir. At one point in the tasting, the wine maker took us out back to the vineyards to talk about the grapes and warm us up (most people weren't dressed for barrel room temperatures like I was). I got some great photos and the day was off to a wonderful start!

We also stopped at Framingham, Drylands, and Lawson's Dry Hills. My favourite in the end was still Nautilus. Framingham had good wines, but I think they are trying to do too many things across their range (I tasted 12 wines there, all over the map). Drylands was educational for me because they are owned by the Nobilo Group, which makes Drylands, Selaks, Monkey Bay, and several other labels I have seen and tasted before from all over New Zealand. Lawson's Dry Hills had a few very good wines, specifically their 08 unoaked Chardonnay, the 04 Chardonnay (oaked, but balanced), and the 08 Pinot Noir Rose.

After all the wine touring, I met up with my friend Annette who has just arrived in Blenheim to work for the next four months. We shared a bottle of St. Clair Sauvignon Blanc at the nice cafe that you can't quite make out in the Blenheim photo below, but it was just behind the palm trees.
Back to Picton on the bus that night and my Marlborough wine tasting weekend was complete! I am so glad I came to this region (the largest in NZ) for tasting, and I am really starting to make sense of the NZ wine map by being here and being able to make associations with vineyard names beyond labels on a bottle and regions on a map.