Wells Worthwhiles: Wine Country

As you may or may not know, Lindsey and I celebrated our 4th anniversary in New Zealand. May 9th is our actual anniversary date, but since our plans dictated that we be travelling on May 9th in our preparation for Abel Tasman, we delayed our anniversary until May 14th this year. So to celebrate, Lindsey and I went to Blenheim, the wine capital of New Zealand, and had ourselves an awesome anniversary.

Basically the South Island has two wine regions- Central Otago and Malborough in the northeast corner of the South Island. We went to the latter. Bleheim is a fairly small town right in the heart of it and draws a lot of visitors for the sake of wine touring. We stayed at a very acclaimed Bed and Breakfast called the Olde Mill House for two nights. First I'll give a blurb about the hosts - they were AWESOME. This place has been a B&B for 10 years now, and they've got it down. It's a fantastic old home owned by a super nice couple. Our room had it's own bathroom (which is a huge deal for us on this trip, since none of the hostels do), a patio right outside of our room, a hot tub!, and a breakfast to die for. The breakfast was homeade muesli (a NZ type of granola cerealish thing), toast, fresh fruits, and a plethora of homeade and home grown jams to choose from. They have all kinds of fruit trees at their house and they make everything fresh. We ate fruit to our heart's content in the mornings and soaked in the hot tub with a bottle of wine at night. Couldn't ask for a better place!

The morning of the 14th, we got up, ate our breakfast, and decided to get a little exercise before we started on the win tour. The Olde Mill House has lots of bikes to rent (free if you're staying with them!), including some tandem bikes, so we decided to hop on one of those and go for a ride through the vineyards. It was a crisp,very sunny morning on the country vineyard roads. In Lindsey's words:"This is paradise." It was so beautiful and fun and we were really pumped we got the chance to do that! We got back to the house, changed, and then it was time for our big anniversary plans: the full day wine tour of Malborough! Our guide Colleen picked us up and we joined 4 other people for the tour. It was such a cool experience. We started off getting some "bubbles" at the No. 1 Family Estate owned business who used to make champagne in France and then proceeded to tour 5 other wineries and a local chocolate shop. Each place had 4-6 wines to taste, each with whites and reds. We tried Chardonnays, Sauvignon Blancs, Pinot Grigios, Rieslings, Pinot Noirs, a Merlot, dessert wine and surely some other things I'm forgetting. Such a fun experience and such a fun day. We of course got ourselves a few bottles of our favorites to bring back home. Several of the wineries have cafes which serve lunch, and we stopped at one with beautiful views from the outdoor seating area and had a scrumptious meal with our our group. It was a really fun group, and we enjoyed their company a lot. Our last stop was the local chocolate factory where we got a few tastings as well.

Wineries Visited:

No.1 Family Eastate

Hunter's

Framingham

Wairau River

Rock Ferry

St. Clair Family Estate

After the day was over, we went to a local place to grab some dinner and found our way back home! It was everything we could have asked for and more for an anniversary, and will definitely go down as the best single day in New Zealand.