Saturday, February 14, 2009
Today is the Marlborough Wine Festival, the event that triggered our trip to New Zealand. We grabbed and early breakfast and walked about a mile down the road from MVH to catch the bus to the festival. We later learned that the bus picked people up across the street from where we were staying, but that information was too late now. Our walk brought us to Marlborough Vintner’s Retreat where we joined a couple groups waiting in the driveway of this hotel. MVH and this hotel were once jointly owned – hence the near identical names.
We arrived at the festival grounds just prior to the 10:30 a.m. opening. The festival grounds were in a large field, part of the Montana-Brancott vineyard. It was laid out with wine and food tents in a very large circle ending at a music stage at the end of the circle. When we entered the grounds, we walked up to the first tent. The winery adorned us with stickers marketing their brand. We had a quick taste and noticed there were prices listed. We paid little attention, thanked the gentleman for the stickers and walked away. After a brief look around we noticed that prices were listed everywhere and finally realized that tasting was going to cost us. After paying a bit for entry we didn’t expect to pay for the tastings, but most of the tastings ranged $2-3 with some $4 tastes, which were essentially 2-4 oz. depending on the pour. You could also receive a full glass for $6-8. We got over this minor shock and moved along.
Mike and I made some crazy edict stating that we would only be drinking Sauvignon Blanc for the entire day. Troy and Rita paid little attention to this absurdity, but did make every attempt to enforce this little arrangement. We did pretty good, sticking to the stated goal, except for the occasional sip from the glasses of Troy and Rita. It helped that some of the Sauvignon Blanc’s were aged in oak and so much diversity in style. It wasn’t a constant pounding of the mineral and grassy focused style of NZ Sauvy’s we get back in the states.
After two passes around the circle, the place started to get a little more crowded. We sat on the grass and tried not to get stepped on by all the drunk people. It was odd to see so many people in one place, in the middle of a field, on a hot summer day, quaffing wine. Had we planned a little better we would have brought a blanket to sit on. The place sort of had a Jazz In The Park (Milwaukee Cathedral Square) feel to it. In the end, the blanket would not have helped all that much as drunk people paid little attention to others and walked all over blankets, hands, small children (just kidding), instead of simply walking around obstacles.
We made the most of the opportunity visiting somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-20 wineries among the four of us including: Clos Marguerite, Villa Maria, Waihopai River, Allan Scott, Seresin, Montana, Framingham, Mudhouse, Wairau River, Saint Clair, Spy Valley, Auntsfield Estate, Daniel le Brun, Huia, etc. Towards the end of the day, Troy threw down the gauntlet and hunted down the huge lamb shank seen earlier along with some fine Pinot Noir. Upon seeing this, Mike could not hold back and broke his pledge of a day with only Sauvignon Blanc.
I thought the festival was very weird. The weather was nice. Started out really sunny, turned partly cloudy and hovered around 70 degrees. When the wind picked up or the sun was behind a cloud it did get a little chilly, but when the sun was out it became very hot. The sun is a funny thing in NZ making it feel much warmer than it is, regardless of air temperature. As we continue south, it is likely we won’t see the heat of the north island again until we get to Tahiti.
Tonight dinner was at the MVH restaurant. The food here was very good! Troy’s dream of Abel Tasman was officially killed at dinner. After some talk this morning and consensus at dinner we decided to take advantage of the open schedule tomorrow and head town to Kaikoura, but Troy insisted not before he gets a stop at Seresin, and Organic Winery gem we found at the festival today.
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