It would be foolish to come to Marlborough and not go wine tasting, so our activity for today was obvious. The problem was which wines to taste – there are so many to choose from. I suggested that we focus on Pinot noir, both rose and red, and use the tastings to stock up on wine for the next leg of the trip. We ruled out the major wineries – why come to New Zealand to taste wines we can get at home – and focused on boutique wineries with an excellent reputation. That narrowed things down, but not as much as you might think. A bit more research and pruning by Jan got us down to six very interesting wineries along an easy route. There is no way we are visiting six wineries in one day, but we didn’t have reservations so we thought we’d play it by ear and see where walk-ins were available.

On the drive to the first winery we loved the contrast between the lush vineyards beside the road, and the dry hills in the distance.

Although I’d suggested we focus on Pinot noir, on our first stop at Fromm Winery we opted for the set summer tasting, and we’re glad we did. You could add others wines to the set flight, so we included a premium Pinot noir in addition to the standard Pinot. Oh my, but it was good.

The flight ended with a Riesling Spatlese that was also amazing. We didn’t have any intention of buying Riesling – Canada has some wonderful ones – but we couldn’t resist. This wasn’t going as planned.

Our next stop was Te Whare Ra where we had made a last minute reservation, since they had three set tastings a day, and didn’t accept walk-ins. Fantastic choice. We were fortunate that our tasting was under-booked. There can be 15-20 people at a tasting, but we had six, and the owner walked us through a half dozen amazing wines. The passion, knowledge, and love of her wines shone through with every wine. It was a fabulous experience – serendipitous opportunities to meet face to face with the winemaker is one of the experiences that I treasure. We did buy Pinot noir red and rose here, but we also bought another Riesling and a blend of Gewertz, Riesling, and Pinot Gris … something that I never would have expected. I could bore you with how the fact that this wine was co-fermented made a huge difference, but I’ll save it for later.

Then it was off for what turned out to be our final stop of the day for a tasting and charcuterie board.

We enjoyed fabulous local cheese and sampled wine as we enjoyed the view over the vineyards. Note that we were now looking in the opposite direction and the hills were green with trees, rather than brown.

We had some entertainment for our tasting, with the local rooster checking us out.

We bought another Pinot noir, but also a Chardonnay – so much for plans! And we also bought a sparkling wine, so we will be able to have an ad hoc meeting of The Other Champagne Club.

The labels for this winery were all designed by a local clothes designer. Very nice.

And for those of you who are doing the math on the tastings, I was driving, but I wasn’t swallowing. So I could still taste!