Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Friday 30th March
We take ourselves off on a wine tour on bicycles today. Well - it would be rude not to considering we're in the most famous wine region in New Zealand. Hee hee. We start off at Wither Hills and I try to sip appreciatively at the various wines before me even though it's 10'o'clock in the morning! We cycle along to Villa Maria, then Matua Valley and buy a bottle of chardonnay to go with dinner tonight.
We're visiting Clare and Wazza who are friends of Lisa's that I met at some of her BBQ's back in the UK. He now works managing a vineyard and she's a wine taster for Cloudy Bay. Needless to say the pressure is on to pick a good wine, especially as Clare tells me she's cooking venison! Having not eaten much deer in my life I'm unsure if the chardonnay is the right choice but the lady behind the counter reassures me that it's fine!
We have lunch at Highfield vineyard which is a replica of a large tuscan property. It's all very fancy with a platter of pesto, olives, chorizo, cheeses, pate and even oysters! They mostly grow Pinot Noir grapes in the large vats next to the toilets! But the smell is wonderful.
Finally we head to Lawsons Dry Hills where we meet the owner, Barbara Lawson. She kindly invites us into their yard where a lorry full of Gewurtztraminer grapes are about to be unloaded and pressed.
Later on that evening we head over to Clare and Wazza's and spend a lovely evening with them. The venison was finished off with Clare's infamous chocolate mousse dessert - slurp!
Saturday 31st March
Clare and Wazza have kindly invited us to see the house they are having built. It's gorgeous and is set in an acre of it's own land. They proudly show us their vegetable patch too that Ceris and Steve built for them.
We've got a little bit of time before we have to catch the ferry over to the north island so we go to Cloudy Bay and Clare gives us the guided tour. This is a rarity as apparently they don't do tours around there at all so we feel really priviledged. It's an impressive set up and again I fall in love with the smell of the grapes. Mmmm.
- comments