More Wine Tours

Now on our way off the south island, we stopped in Bleinheim for a couple of nights to sample some of the world famous Marlborough wines, particularly the Sauvignon Blanc, their most famous export. Having eschewed an organised wine tour as being too expensive, Andy nominated himself as driver and, rather foolishly, we set off straight after breakfast yesterday morning. Having driven around a bit to survey what was on offer (and to let our cornflakes go down as we weren't feeling quite ready to launch into the wine) we chose our first stop, Nautilus winery. As soon as we had tasted two or three wines we got our tastebuds "in" and managed to forget it was only an hour since breakfast... Four wineries later and we were well into our stride. We chose wineries from the small boutiquey "Huia", manned by a very knowledgeable Czech girl to the huge "Cloudy Bay", probably the most famous winemaker in this region. We could see why - it was there that we were seduced into buying a 40 dollar bottle of "Te Kako", a delicious oak-aged Sauv. At Cloudy Bay we were told that the largest winery in the region (and the oldest, although its only 30 years old), Montana, had a cellar tour starting at 1. It being 20 to, we drove as fast as our little van could take us and got there just in time. The tour was really interesting, and an extremely knowledgeable and friendly lady showed us round the crushers, the giant storage tanks and hundreds of oak barrels, finishing with a tasting of four different wines. The winery can store an incredible 20 million litres of wine every season, and exports much of this to the UK. We did our bit for the local economy by buying two more bottles. Having worked up quite an appetite we then repaired to the Mud House, yet another winery which also has delicious local food. After a huge sharing platter and cup of rosy lea (having had quite enough wine by this time - six wineries before lunch!) we felt we had done justice to the wines of the Marlborough region. Heading back we detoured via the cinema for a soporific showing of "The Queen" (verdict - very good). Back at the ranch we checked email where I found out that I am soon-to-be gainfully employed again, RDA Llanfynydd have offered to have me back on my return, thank goodness. So thats one of us with an income, the only problem being keeping two people on a salary of 5.35 an hour.... By the way thank you Mr Blair for increasing minimum wage by a whole 30p since I left! This called for a celebratory dinner, so it was tinned spaghetti on toast all round!