We arrived in Blenheim - Marlborough wine country - and booked straight onto a wine tasting day. The trip included visits to eight different wineries of our choice, plus some additional stops, during our seven hours.

We got picked up at 10am and went straight to our first winery, Montana. This is a wine which we drink at home, so it was quite exciting to get a look at how it was made. This is one of the biggest wineries in the Marlborough region so was very fancy. The wines were as you would expect and it was a great start to the morning.

After Montana we started heading to little family owned wineries which were incredible. We quickly realised that the smaller companies are definitely the better out here.

We stopped off for lunch in a beautiful vineyard where we had amazing steak burgers for lunch. We were spoiling ourselves a bit, but it was Valentines Day after all!

In the afternoon we headed to a 'village' where we were able to taste some more wines, some locally brewed schnapps, fudge and different olive oils. It was a welcome break by this point from all the wine we were drinking. Each place we visited gave us 5-8 tasters, which starts to wear you down!! The schnapps was amazing and we were able to choose any we wanted to try. It was pretty potent stuff.

After that we carried on to yet more vineyards, sampled more wines and feeling more and more sleepy. Our final stop of the day was at a chocolate makers which was enough to wake anyone up! The chocolate was incredible, but unfortunately at quite high prices so we didn't buy any. Luckily these places are quite happy with you just trying everything!

This is our last stop in the south island, we have had so much fun here its a shame to be leaving. Our time in New Zealand is going very quickly!