Day 11: Wine tasting in Marlborough
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Monday morning, I walked the
perimeter of the Woodside
Heritage Homestead with Flynn and Paddy. They reported
no perimeter breaches
with the exception of a rabbit, which wasn’t worthy of
inclusion in the daily
action report. After breakfast, we headed out
to start our visit of the
“cellar doors” that we had selected. Nanette, our host at the
Marlborough B&B, works at Yealands
Estate so we made that our first stop. It was a little
off the path of The
Marlborough Wine Trail so we left early so that the
40-minute drive would get
us there when they opened. Peter
Yealands is a genius winemaker and forerunner in
sustainable farming. At the tasting room before
trying the wines, we watched a
video on all of Yealands composting, renewable
farming, and zero-footprint
strategies that he has used in winemaking.
Whatever he is doing, it works. Most
of the wines that we tried were exceptional. We
ended up narrowing our
selection to our top five:
Nanette recommended that we visit the vineyard and
animals.
The vineyard at Yealands hosted miniature
“Babydoll” sheep, Kunekune pigs,
chickens, and a variety of wild avian visitors. I
asked if they had anything
that I could feed the chickens and it happened
that they kept a bucket of
scratch behind the tasting counter for the
children. With my bag of scratch, I
scampered happily out to the vineyard. |
| The first sign on the road to the vineyard warned us of the hazards that were to come. |
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On the road leading to the cliff
overlooking the ocean, we
saw some chickens in the vineyard but we figured that
they were too far to coax
over to us. At the top, we found an
observation point overlooking
Clifford Bay. The view overlooking the bay was
spectacular.
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Upon returning to the car, we
found that the chickens that
we had seen in the vineyard down the road had followed
us to the cliff and were
checking out the car. |
| The trio of hens was
accompanied by a huge, white rooster. He didn’t come as close to us as
the hens did but he kept a wary, glowing, red eye on us the entire time. |
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Driving back down the road to
the tasting room, we stopped
to try to spot one or more of the “Babydoll” miniature
sheep. Evidently they
were out in the field “mowing” the grass because we
never saw them. However,
upon return to the car, we found this guy waiting for
us to let us know who was
boss.
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With the exceptional wines,
playing with the animals, and
the view from the cliff, our visit to Yealands was the
high point of the day.
Win. After making the 40-minute drive
back to Blenheim where the
rest of the vineyards were, we stopped at Fromm
Vineyard, which has been
recommended by a couple of reliable sources. Coralie, a true Marlborough
native, was manning the tasting
bar. We ended up talking about our children more than
actually tasting the
wine. Despite the chitchat, we ended up settling on
our favorites:
The Malbec surprised me the most, being one of my
favorite
grapes that I seldom see outside of Argentina. Win. Our next stop was to Forrest
Vineyards. We had selected
Forrest as a candidate because of all of the Forrest
wines that were featured
on Raupo’s wine list when we first arrived in town. We
found four wines that
were worthy of taking home. Win.
We had gotten recommendations to have lunch at Rock
Ferry,
which was one of the vineyards that wasn’t recommended
for their wine but was
for their restaurant. The food was indeed consistent
with the good reviews.
While we were there, we also did the wine tasting.
Rudy, a Holland transplant
who had been a New Zealand native for 37 years, guided
our tasting tour. I’m
glad that we took the chance to do the tasting because
we found at least four
of Rock Ferry’s wines that were exceptional. Win.
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After lunch, we headed to the
next place on the list: Allan
Scott Family Winemakers. We had gotten a few
recommendations for this place but
it was a disappointment. The tasting room was packed
upon our arrival and we
could barely keep the attention of the tasting bar
attendant. Nothing that we tasted
was exceptional. Fail. Afterward we headed to Nautilus,
another highly-recommended
vineyard. At first, I thought that this was going to
be a fail. The tasting
room was packed with drunk tourists and we tried the
standard fare that was
disappointing. Then everything changed: All of the
tourists left and we had
full attention of Geoff, the lone tasting bar
attendant. We tried the top-tier
fare, not normally served at the tasting bar, and
found three gems that we
would not have otherwise discovered. Win.
With very little time left before cellar doors closed
for
the day, we tried Seresin Vineyards, another
recommendation and frequent
appearance on wine lists. Although the documentation
listed them as open, they
had “appointment only” notices and other indications
that we should GO AWAY so
away we went. Fail. Just minutes before closing
time, we stopped in a
Framingham. A large tour was just clearing out so we
had Lauren, the tasting
bar host, to ourselves. The winemaker for Framingham
specialized in Rieslings
and hosted at least five different labels at the bar.
I’m not a Riesling fan
but two of them were exceptional in their class. We
also found a near-perfect
sauvignon blanc. Win. For supper, we gave Raupo
another chance (the same place as
the disappointing lunch the first day). We had been
trying to find a hotel
restaurant that a few had recommended to us but it
must have been very well
concealed because we have not been able to find it.
Rapuo was marginally better
than our lunch experience. We had chicken ravioli,
mussels, some baked, crusted
chicken, and lamb. |