Day 73 - Sun 11th Jan - Blenheim, Marlborough

Blenheim is in the heart of the Marlborough wine region, home of the NZ Sauvingnon blanc. Not a long journey to Blenheim so I got there about 11am, and headed straight out on a wine tour at 1pm!

There were 9 of us in the minibus and we got to influence where we went which was good and unlike a lot of the tours. We went to a couple of the big ones, Wither Hills and Cloudy Bay (twice!), and then two other smaller ones as well.

The wines were really good and I ended up agreeing to go on a tour the next day with the same guy but to different vineyards.

In the evening I had a pub meal then headed back to the hostel to watch a film in the hostel. The room was quite nice, was only a tripple bed with an en suite and a TV in the room, so it was total luxury compared to some of the places I'd been in.

Phone still hasn't been working all day.

Day 74 - Mon 12th Jan - Blenheim

Managed to make it to the phone shop - it transpires that the (brand new) charger doesn't work. Get a new one, full 12 hours of charging to get the beast going again.

Started my wine tour at 11.30am today (So nice not to have to get up for an 8am bus!!). For the first two hours it was just me, it was like having my own private wine chauffeur! Then after lunch he picked up an English couple who were really nice, they were from Leeds and had been living in Oz for a year. For the rest of the afternoon it was just the three of us which was great and much better than 9 people the day before as we got to go around more places.

We went to completely different vineyards this time, apart from one of the small ones from the before which I really liked and was definitely my favourite.

Throughout the two days I had been compiling a list of my favourite wines and at the end of it I put together a case load to be shipped back home. That will give me something to make going back to work a bit easier!!

For those of you actually interested in the wine, I found it really interesting that most of the places we went to actually didn't really like their Sauv blancs despite them being their biggest sellers.

The wines I was most pleasantly surpirsed by, which were the ones the makers prefered, were Riesling, Pinot Gris & Gewurztraminer. No seriously. I'm not a fan of sweet wines but some of the dry Gewurtz were really nice. But the Pinot Gris were my favourite, so next time you are in the supermarket by a bottle of Marlborough Pinot Gris and tell me what you think!