A weekend in wine country!

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Getting up bright and early we kicked off our first day in Blenheim with a Highlights wine tour, a locally owned wine and vineyard tour of the Marlborough wine region. Marlborough is one of the main and better wine regions in New Zealand so it seemed only proper, being the wine fans that we are, that we devoted a good hunk of our time here to see (and drink) as much as possible. Starting off with a scheduled wine tour on our first day seemed the best way to go. The sun was shining, the degrees were high so it was the perfect day to cruise round some vineyards and sip on some cold Sauvignon which is what the region is famous for. The guide Dave was fab, he was so accomodating to our preferences and what we wanted to get out of the day all in all. We went to seven vineyards in total throughout the day. In order, Rock ferry, Cloudy Bay, Bladen, Wairau where we stopped for lunch, Spy Valley, Brancott & Whitehaven. Each vineyard was my favourite in its own way, they were all so different and unique; from Bladen a lovely, small family owned boutique winery, to Brancott a massive well-known label sold worldwide which had the name and stunning views from its tasting room. Wairau where we stopped for lunch was lovely and was in such a beautiful setting. I had a prawn pizza and Rich a lamb burger, both of which were absolutely delicious! Aswell as being yummy they were both filling, perfect for lining our little bellies for the remaining vineyards. We finished up the day at a chocolate factory and feeling the affects of one too many tastings headed home for a evening in.

The next day, Sunday, was the chill out day in our wine tasting sandwich. We lazed around, did some shopping, cleaning and sunbathed. It was really nice to have a day of nothingness without being forced to do so by the weather.

Monday 22nd we rented bikes from the reception at the holiday park and started out nice and early to get to Villa Maria for 10am. Wine for breakfast apparently ?? Through Rich we had been lucky enough to be hooked up with a private tour of the Villa Maria vineyard. On arrival, we had to don hard hats and high vis and me the added bonus of some wellies (my sandals didn't meet health and safety) before we got given the behind the scenes tour of the vineyard. It was amazing and so so interesting. We saw into all the production side of things up to the barrelling, which was something I personally had never seen before. It was great to see the amount of time, effort and number of processes that goes into creating a mass produced wine. After our tour it was time for the slightly funner part- the tasting. All in all, I think we tried about twenty something different wines! For obvious reasons this was amazing... But it was great to be able to see such variety with the wines and have someone take the time to answer questions and go into real detail about the wines we were tasting as well! After the amazing experience of Villa Maria we went to four other vineyards Wither Hills, Allan Scott (where we stopped for lunch) Giesen and Saint Claire. It was a great day but a definite struggle at the end.. Particularly the stint to get to the final vineyard and then home. And no, it wasn't because of all the wine we had drank.. All in all we cycled 36 miles in total that day! We had slightly underestimated the distances between everything and had no idea how far away everything was from Blenheim! Safe to say we had sore bums and legs after that stint and may rethink our routes if we were to do it again.

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