NZ-marlborough wine country

On Day 1, we visited Montana (aka Brancroft in US), Cloudy Bay, Allan Scott, From and Grove Mill.
Montana was recommended by several kiwis as it's the biggest winery in NZ, so being fans of the mom & pop wineries we were a little apprehensive. However, we had a great time tasting 8 different Sauv Blancs thanks to a very knowledgable winery employee. We learned about all the different brands, vineyards and appellations where Montana-Brancroft has grapes, which was a bit dizzying at first! We bought 1 terroir-specific wine to enjoy on our NZ trip, and another for tasting back home with our other NZ wines (don't forget to remind us!)

I was really looking forward to visiting Cloudy Bay, as I've had their wines in USA, and was excited when we arrived - the place had a great brick courtyard where you walked in. But I was a bit disappointed with the wine tasting - not a big variety, and the staff seemed a bit distracted with their coworkers milling about.

In a similar vein, Allan Scott was a quick visit. Even though he's been a longtime winemaker in Marlborough, the girl pouring our wines only seemed to know a little about the wines and the winery. But we did buy a Sauv Blanc from here.

A nice surprise was Fromm. A German decided to start a winery in Marlborough and focus just on reds, making some fantastic Pinots in a variety of styles. We bought one that I think we'll cellar a few years and then see how it comes out! We also enjoyed reading the detailed wine notes they had at the tasting room and chatting with the lady pouring our wines.

Our last visit of the day, Grove Mill, seemed like a bit of a letdown. I think we were really tired after all the wines we tasted that day! But we really liked their organic and environmentally friendly approach. We also bought a Pinot for future tasting :)

Our dinner was at Gibb's Vineyard Restaurant, fantastic place in the middle of a vineyard. We had a Fox Island Pinot; our waitress' father is the owner! We started with a delicious mussel appetizer, followed by our lamb and fish dishes. Wow! One of the best meals we had in NZ.

Day two was a short wine tasting trip. We visited Clos Henri, which was started by a french winemaking family from Sancerre. Their wine tasting room was a small church they transplanted from 60 km away! We bought a mellow Old World-New World style Pinot.

Finally, we visited Seresin winery, named after the NZ director Michael Seresin. Here we tried a variety of whites and reds; we did buy one, but the fun part about the winery was that we also got to taste some of their boutique olive oils - yum!

After Marlborough, we headed to Nelson where we planned to spend a night before going on a 3-day kayak trip. Along the way, we drove through coastal towns in the Marlborough Sounds and stopped to have a quick seafood lunch. We had some great fried oysters and mussels - these were really tasty with beer :)

NZ-martinborough wine country

After our Tongariro speed hike, we had a leisurely morning wake-up the following day and left National Park to continue our journey south along the North Island. Our destination this time was Masterton. A few times we stopped along the drive to Masterton to ask about which route would be more scenic, and each time the Kiwi we asked said, "why Masterton?" with a bewildered look on their face. See, kiwis seem to think there isn't much of interest between National Park and Wellington, except for some wine country regions along the east coast.

Well, the simple answer is that we were meeting my cousin Claudia who was working at Johner Winery. Claudia has been travelling around Australia and NZ on a working holiday visa. It had also been around 10 years since I last saw her, which was when I was graduating from college.

We learned from Claudia that winery work is quite demanding. Actually, we have learned that any agriculture seems to be tough work - seems like there's always something to do. Hmm... sounds a lot like consulting...

We met most of the Johner Winery crew, including the owner, Karl Heinz, the winemaker, sales rep (winemaker's girlfriend), and another girl, Katy, who was working there on her working holiday visa. Everyone was German!

After introductions, we took Claudia and Katy to their house to drop off our stuff and headed to the market to get dinner supplies. We (Julie, Claudia and I) prepared a delicious NZ mussel stew in tomato sauce, steamed veggies, and of course plenty of Johner Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir to accompany dinner.

Claudia, Katy, the winemaker and his girlfriend were all living in a little cottage close by. It had a beautiful view overlooking Johner winery and the surrounding farm region, with views across the Masterton /Gladstone valley. Claudia was kind enough to give us her room while she slept on the couch - I think she got a nice deal as the couch is in the living room with the coal-burning stove for warmth! It was a true experience of living in the country!

The following day we headed over to Martinborough for some wine tasting. This area is known for its Sauv Blancs and Pinots. We visited Gladstone, Ata Rangi, Alana, Canadoro, and Nga Waka. Ata Rangi had some great Pinots, while we bought a few Cab Sauvs at Canadoro - believe it or not NZ can make some good heavy reds! I was surprised to hear that Alana considered their regular Sauv Blanc to only need 3-7 years of age, with their Reserve at 12-15! We later learned not all the wineries bottle such young whites. Nga Waka was a quick stop, as the owner, Roger, didn't normally do tastings, but stopped by to say hello since he was good friends with a PwC colleague, Peter Randle.

We had such a good time with Claudia that we decided to stay an extra night, and the housemates were kind enough to let us do that. Fortunately for them it also meant they had 2 extra cooks for another night! We learned that Claudia did most of the cooking - I am proud of our family's cooking skills! After dinner, Julie and Claudia spent the rest of the night talking, with much laughter - I think Julie was enjoying the childhood stories that Claudia was sharing with her :O

The next day we went to Wellington to visit the town and take the night ferry to the South Island. We found Wellington to be a pretty harbour city with a bustling downtown area, albeit small by US city standards. Our first stop was up to a vista point at Mt. Victoria, which provided some very pretty views of Wellington and the harbor. Julie and I visited the Te Papa museum while Claudia kicked around town. The Te Papa musuem was great - lots of big Maori artifacts to look at, and we were lucky enough to catch some schoolkids doing some traditional songs & dances in the auditorium! Very impressive to see how NZ is working to preserve the Maori customs. Later we walked along the bay, meandered through the city hall plaza, and walked up a pedestrian shopping street. We had some of the best gelatto of our trip at a small bayfront store. Unfortunately that was all the time we had, so we left Claudia and headed to the port to take our ferry to Picton on the South Island.

Barossa Valley, South Australia

After Heron Island, we continued our "high life" adventure by flying to Adelaide and renting a car to drive to Barossa Valley for the weekend. Barossa is Oz's oldest wine region so we thought we might be doing a "Napa Valley" weekend.

I had fun driving up in a little Toyota Yaris (smaller than a mini - in fact, we don't have anything nearly as small in the states - imagine that!), with manual transmission and in the left lane! Fortunately we had 2 weeks in Oz to get used to being on the other side of the road. Driving up to Barossa, we took the A20 to B19 which was a nice country road into Barossa through Gawler and then Tanunda, where our B&B was located - Lawley Farm! Leslie met us and showed us our own cottage, which was as charming as we could have imagined it; amidst vineyards and with a lovely garden and friendly farm animal (ducklings :)) steps away. She recommended we just stick to Krondorf Road as there were so many famous wineries on our street.

Well, what a nice change of pace we had in Barossa! Barossa is still low-key and informal, even compared to Sonoma wineries. Our Saturday wineries included lunch at Barossa Vines and tastings at small boutique wineries - Charles Melton (wines were poured by Virginia, the friendly wife of Charles, the wine maker; it was a load of fun as we experienced the tasting while chatting with some Aussies), Rockford, St. Hallets, and Villa Tinto .

Villa Tinto turned out to be a wonderful surprise. Alberto is the owner, who originally hails from Mendoza Argentina (an instant connection for me (X)! He started the winery, making wines which IMHO are very similar to the food-friendly wines of Argentina, Spain and Italy; not so much for tasting & enjoying on their own, but with food, as it should be! I started speaking in spanish with Alberto, and then 2 Spaniards showed up, who were also directed to Villa Tinto by another winery. One thing led to another, and Alberto gave us some tastes out of his barrels and his lovely wife Diane even invited us to a delicious dinner of asado (Argentine BBQ right in his own backyard), spanish tortilla cooked by the Spaniards, and of course more Villa Tinto wine! We had a great time seeing the video of some TV coverage of the winery, spoke loads of Spanish and some German (!) and making some new friends in Australia.

Sunday I(X) woke up with a little hangover, but we still enjoyed our farm-fresh egg breakfast delivered to our room :). We visited Torbreck, Murray Street, Two Hands, and then back to Villa Tinto to buy our wines and ship everything to Sydney! We unfortunately found out Henschke was closed early; we had hoped to taste there on our drive back to Adelaide.

We stopped in North Adelaide to eat at Cibo, which had a delicious gnocchi. We stayed in the old part of Adelaide to be close to Wayward Bus Tours for our trip to the Great Ocean Road the next day.