Blenheim - A Tale of 2 Wineries
If you’re stopping in Blenheim for a few days, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re going to visit a winery or 2. Cathy and I like good wine and the Marlborough Region of New Zealand is noted for some spectacular wines, mostly white but also Pinot Noir. We spent a bit of time trying to find 2 wineries that we could visit that were on the smaller size, organic and/or family owned. We settled on Forrest Wines and Saint Clair Wines.
Forrest wines allows you to bring your own picnic lunch to enjoy while tasting so after a nice 1 1/2 hour hike up the hill to see some sights of Blenheim (and sheep of course), we packed a cheese and cracker picnic (remember the cheese from Evansdale and Geraldine…) and headed out. Our host, Rose, at Forrest Wines did a great job giving us an overview of the winery, their philosophy and what to expect from the tastings we were about to do. Needless to say, we had a very relaxing afternoon there, tasted some wonderful whites and a decent Pinot Noir, all accompanied with the last of the cheese we bought in Evansdale, and a bit from Geraldine. Bought a few bottles for the next part of our trip planned for the next day.
Views from the Hike and even sheep are into Rugby here, practicing their scrum!
A Picnic at Forrest Wines
Day 2 and we were off to Saint Clair Wines. A slightly bigger winery, but the hosts still made you feel like family. We chose a hosted wines tasting this time and our host Mell, walked us through some beautiful wines including some unique varietals including a Gruner Veltliner and an Albarino. No, we’re not wine snobs or experts by any means but it’s nice to try something new. Both were very good btw and we bought a bottle of the Veltliner (OK, and a couple of other bottles too!). Again, a great experience and if you’re in the area and looking for wineries to visit, both Forrest and Saint Clair are worth a stop.
Back home for lunch then a walk in town along the river, and cold pint at the Marlborough Public House. The weather has been absolutely stunning here, cool nights and warm (even hot!) days.
Along the River into Blenheim
The time in Blenheim has been a nice way of capping off our time on the South Island. We’ve been here just a few days shy of 2 months and we know we’ll be back the next time we come to NZ. This is a special part of the country and while we’ve down heaps, there are many more places to explore and we will. Now all we have to deal with today is the ferry to Wellington. We’ll see if it‘s close to being ontime after days of delays due to heavy weather on Cook Strait. Wish us luck!
