A country of wine

For wine lovers, New Zealand is quite the paradise. Pretty much anywhere you travel in the country you will see vineyards and be able to taste a grand variety of wines. Napa Valley has nothing on this country, and I can personally attest to it!

While the North Island has its share of vineyards mostly in Hawke’s Bay on the east coast and some near Auckland, the best wines are produced mostly in the Nelson/Marlborough region. Nelson has some 20 or 25 wineries but the most famous wineries are in the Marlborough Region near the cities of Blenheim and Renwick, about 1.5 hours drive (on the slow road!) from Nelson. So everyone who comes to visit gets the grand, personal tour with Don and Angela!

Today we visited our first group of wineries in Nelson, those that were open in the winter months. The rest will open in spring, come mid-September and October. We came home today with 9 bottles of wine, mostly Pinot Noirs and a Riesling. We’ll head to Blenheim in a few months and likely get a hotel room for that tour.

New Zealand is known mostly for its white wines, chardonnays, sauv blancs, gewurtztraminers, and we’ve even enjoyed the pinot gris that are made. As far as reds, you will mostly find pinot noirs rather than cabernets or merlots, or even syrahs (shirazes). Besides pinot noirs, you’ll see a lot of cabernet merlot mixes, but not exclusively either. Many wineries also make a malbec and/or a combination of cab/merlot/malbec. But we’ve come to really enjoy the pinot noirs. Today we visited a winery started by an Austrian and he uses some grape called a zeitgeist or whatever and it makes what he calls a Sylvia, a red. I dunno, but it was good.

Most of the wines you’ll find in the country are also sealed with screw caps, not corks. Despite the French not moving along in the area of corkage, apparently screw caps are the wave of the future. With corks, over time air does end up leaking slowly into the wine and will affect it eventually. With screw caps, the air is locked out and the bottle can keep forever. Not every winery in New Zealand is doing this, we’ve learned sometimes due to appearances—premium brands have to look right, and looking right means corking.

So when you visit, if you are a wine lover or aficionado or just a semi-alcoholic, we’ll take you around our wine region! Cheers!