Wine Tasting

Our first stop on the South Island had to be wine country so we found ourselves a nice little campsite in Blenhiem, Marlborough. With an on site swimming pool we lazed about our first afternoon relaxing before our full day of wine tasting the following day.

Our guide for the day was Jonathon and the tour was courtesy of "Bubbly Grapes", a suitable name i thought. Our first stop and at 10.30am was Lawsons Dry Hills and there we sampled our first 8 wines ranging from the ever popular Sauvignon blanc to unoaked chardonnay. Pinot Noir cropped up in all of the tours and were exceptionly nice. From Lawsons to Wither Hills which was personally one of my favourites plus it had the nicest setting and gardens. Jonathon even showed us their function areas incase we wanted a wedding there!!!!!!!! Cloudy Bay was next and again we had a good selection of wines to taste. We were starting to feel very tipsy at this point. Our next stop was Serasin which is owned by a film maker who works with Peter Jackson or something and here we bought lemon oil instead of wine, it was better than the wine. We stopped for lunch at a quaint little village typle winery with on site cafe, shop and gin tasting. i opted out of this one and tried the garlic oils and butterscotch licqures instead. a trip to Bladens winery was next and another of my favourites. in fact the wines here got a lot of ticks from me (I had a notebook making notes of which wines i liked) but this vcould have been cause i felt half shot at this pount. Afterwards we visited a fudge shop owned by a lady from Ormskirk so we chatted to her for quite a while before heading to the chocolate factory, mmmmm, then back to the campsite where i was completely wined out. I would recommend this tour to anyone and I have to say we both agreed that it was far superior to that of the Hunter Valley. Maybe it was the quality of the wines. A huge thumbs up to the Marlborough Wine Tasting .

The day after we had planned to stay in a place called Nelson due to its picturesque beaches but we awoke to grey skies and a lightfall. We passed through it instead, stopping for lunch. Lunch was a long awaited baked potato. its white fluffiness peeking at me through its crisp, dark skin, its amazing how being away makes you want the simplist of things. I have been harping on about baked potatoes since December so it was truly worth the wait when I finally had it.

After lunch we jumped into the van and decided to head south to Greymouth where whatever the weather we would do a scenic walk. With the radio on we were driving along when the earthquake announcement aired.