October 11-12
Our first stop on the South Island was wine country… again. This time it’s Marlborough which is where New Zealand’s best Sauvignon Blancs come from. Sauvignon Blanc is the varietal that put New Zealand wine on the map. While we drink mostly big, bold reds, I love a crisp, fruity Sauv Blanc – especially on a warm beautiful day. That said, the weather for our few days in Marlborough was less than ideal. It was rainy and cold – not really ideal crisp whites. They get just two or three rainy days a year and we happened to make it for two of those days. Boo. But we must soldier on in this tough life of ours.
Our first stop was Spy Valley Wines. So apparently the area has a secure communication facility called Waihopai Station. It is claimed to be run by New Zealand’s Communication Security Bureau which I assume is their NSA equivalent. But it is believed to be part of ECHELON which is the worldwide network of “signal interception” facilities run jointly by intelligence agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. So it’s a spy base.
In the background on the left you can see two white domes. That’s the spy headquarters. Apparently there is a huge radar antenna in each of the two domes which are actually called “radomes”. The radomes are suppose to protect the antenna from weather and conceal the equipment from view. I’m not sure those two huge domes are all that inconspicuous in wine country. Thank you Wikipedia for all of your great knowledge.
We tried to get a little closer but all the roads were closed to the public. Figures they’d try to keep it extra hard to approach.
So Spy Valley Winery incorporates a lot of clever spy lingo and pictures into their buildings and their bottles.
Plus they use Morse code on their bottles. It was a lot of fun.
Next we popped into Nautilus. It was fine – a bit unremarkable. No pictures. No anecdotes.
For both nights we stayed at a really cute airbnb on a vineyard. Here’s the view out our back door:
It gave Michael a chance to cook a few meals (bolognese one night and rack of lamb the other night). Plus we got to meet a few new friends.
This picture does not do that rooster justice. He was a BEAST! Twice the size of the hens. The next day at one of the wineries we saw that someone had a portrait made of him.
For as delightful as the airbnb cottage was, the stay was a comedy of errors. First the internet was broken. Not a huge deal – especially since most wifi we encounter is not that reliable anyways. Then the next night the electricity went out for three or so hours. It was a large issue that required the electric company to come out. Then that same night a pipe burst at the cottage so we didn’t have water. We were there during a very rare freeze. I told you the weather was a bit crappy. But the guy was super nice and responsive and it was fine. And Michael was clever enough to finish dinner by boiling water on the grill to cook our pasta.
On day two, our first stop was Cloudy Bay.
Then we had a tour of Hans Herzog. This winery is another organic farm. Since they don’t use any pesticides they get these amazing wild flowers growing in between their vines. I just love it. The winery next door just had dead brown grass between their vines from the pesticides.
We had our tasting in the cellar which was delightful.
The above varietal – Zweigelt – was one that we were not familiar. It is the most widely grown red grape varietal in Austria. It is apparently a cross of St. Laurent and Blaufrankisch. Ahh – that clears it up.
The wines were delicious enough that we opted to stay for lunch as well. Before coming to Australia, the winemaker had a two Michelin starred restaurant in Switzerland, so we new the food was going to be delicious. And we were right.
Not the prettiest to look at, but this leek soup was possibly the best soup I’ve ever had.
All in all, Hans Herzog was our best stop in Marlborough.
The last stop was Fromm Winery. I was immediately excited when we pulled up.
Their logo is the Marianist logo! It turns out that this is the city emblem of Malans, Switzerland, where Georg and Ruth Fromm are originally from. But with the red and white here, it made my mind jump right to this:
Lots of Marianists on the brain in New Zealand. The wines were delicious – they do a lot of good Pinot Noirs which are not typically our favorite. But Fromm had some really great ones.
That’s it for Marlborough. Next we were off to start our trip south to Queensland.