Marlborough Wine Tasting

Today we took a break from our hectic schedule of adventuring to enjoy a more sedate kiwi experience: wine tasting.

We learned:
* 35 years ago the main industry in the area was sheep and fruit;
* the vines are extensively pruned to ensure very high quality (and this low grape yields);
* 85% of the wine is exported.

The last two explain why we found that even here, local wine cannot be purchased for under £8. In fact the reasonably priced wine here is the same as at home: Aussie and Chilean!

We visited five wineries, of which my favourite was “Spy Valley” (the name is due to the US listening post located in the same valley!) because as well as their cool name and morse code adorned labels, I really enjoyed all of their wines, from the sparkling white (codename “Echelon”) to the soft Merlot which is not easy to grow in this area but they produce anyway because the vinters are big Merlot fans themselves.

2 Responses to “Marlborough Wine Tasting”

  1. jess (fushmush) Says:

    One of my favourite wines is a Marlborough Savignon Blanc…. yum!

  2. Nathan Says:

    yum, indeed! 🙂 I think the most enlightening part of the tour was discovering that every Savignon Blanc we tasted was really quite different, and while I would describe myself as a Sav. Blanc fan, I actually didn’t like about 50% of those we tasted.