The weather today was quite random – sunny and calm one minute, windy and raining the next. A good day for indoor wine tasting!
Lawson’s Dry Hills – Our first stop of the day, we just beat a large group to start our tasting. Julia was friendly and full of knowledge about the wines. Most of these we can get in the USA but we wanted to see if we liked any since we were so close. Most of the whites ate $20-25 which is pretty good for the area, but all the wines tasted watered-down to us. Nothing stood out as exceptional given the competition in the area.
Hunter’s Wines – Overall a good place for a tasting and lunch. I found the wines just fine, nothing super memorable save for the dessert wine (which we bought a bottle of). We figured they would be good with food, so we stayed for lunch – I had the venison and pinot noir meat pie with fries and a glass of Pinot Noir and Eric had the ham and cheese panini with the Gewurtztraminer. The food took a while to come out but we were in no rush.
Moa Brewing – We stopped in for a tasting but it was a bit crowded and the only things on offer were IPAs and pales. $5 for a tasting flight but nothing looked appealing so we skipped it.
Our next winery stop, Fromm, had a nice mix of whites and reds available for tasting. Rebecca was a good hostess and we really liked the wines here. The Syrah Reserve was particularly good and different from a lot of reds I had tasted in the valley, so I picked up a bottle. Eric liked the La Strada Sauvignon Blanc and the German-style Riesling Spatlese. They are also a biodynamic winery for those that care about that sort of thing.
Bladen – Our last stop of the day, this small tasting room (the smallest in Marlborough!) was very quaint and the vineyard’s Irish Setter, Vinnie, was adorable. We found the Gewurtz, Rose, and Pinot Noir to be very good and the owner himself, a former Wellingtonian, was pouring the wines.
Eric spotted a road going into the southern hills on the map, so we drove a bit to see what was down there. Nice views!
We parked the car for a bit and took a walk along the riverfront, downtown was pretty dead on a Sunday evening.
For dinner we drove to Dodson’s Street Beer Garden where we both opted for the pizza and pint special – a personal pizza and 1/2 L of beer each for $23, quite the solid deal in NZ. Given the value, and that it was one of the only places open on Sunday, it was very busy. Picking a beer was a bit odd as you ordered at your table and the waitress gave us a beercap token to get out beers at the bar area on the complete other side of the restaurant. There is also no draught or wine menu so I took photos of the 20+ taps and ten-ish wine choices and brought my phone back to the table so we could choose. Food was fine but I couldn’t finish my beer — too much liquid already that day!