Marlborough Winery Bike Tour – Day 244

Today we’re going on a Winery Crawl by Bike in Marlborough.

Today we start with the obvious it’s our first full day in Blenheim and Marlborough is the largest wine region in New Zealand and Blenheim is it’s capital. So what are we doing today? Well, we are doing a wine tour.

We’re not doing just a wine tour though we’re doing pretty much a winery crawl by bike we’re doing a guided tour with Explore Marlborough so we can check out some of the best wineries in the region.

After fitting our bike and putting on some helmets on, yes, the helmets are mandatory in New Zealand when biking on the roads, we are hitting the road but it only takes a few minutes before we stop and get in insight about the Marlborough region and its wine history.

Karen knows heaps about the wine in the region because she’s been here all her life and she gives us amazing insights including something really amazing If you notice around the Marlborough area there is a lot of white stones at the bottom of the vines and it is said that this is what gives a very distinct taste to the wine of the region. And we’re about to taste it ourselves.

the first winery we’re checking out on our winery crawl is Framingham wines which has a really cool rock music theme to it. Also Karen chooses this as the first winery to check out because it has a great variety of lots of different wines. And because Robin and I don’t have a select wine palette it seems like a good place to start. It’s also a great place to taste the Sauvignon Blanc of the region which is pretty much the wine that this region is known for. 85% of the wine coming out of the New Zealand is Sauvignon Blanc and most of it is made right here in this region. We try 6 or maybe 7 really awesome wines here at Framingham. the one that stands out to us is this 11-year-old Riesling which is a wine that you don’t get to try at many cellar doors around here so that’s really awesome.

So now that we get to experience the terroir of Framingham we are heading toward their cellar. It’s quite interesting they have a really cool looking cellar with a few bottles on display it’s just good looking it’s just a great way also to kind of cool down because oh my god it’s so hot today.

After that we hop back on our bikes toward out next destination we have many wineries on our itinerary today and it’s really cool to go one to the other by bike because it feels like we kind of sweating the wine off and we’re not getting as drunk as we would if we were just doing it by bus or by foot.

Our next winery is Bladen winery and it Karen tells us it’s one of her favourites on here itinerary because it’s a very family orientated winery. It’s all about family at Bladen there is the dad there is the mum there’s the kids everybody is working at some part in the winery it’s quite cool.

Dan is our host at Bladen and he tells us all about the genesis and how and why he started this winery it was at the big turn of his life when he started having kids and wanted more time with the family and a 9 to 5 job just wouldn’t suit that so he started this business in hope to make something that the whole family could enjoy together. it’s really cool and on top of that he has one of the cutest dogs ever.

A thing a really love about this winery apart from the wine of course is that it’s just a real intimate setting. The bar is like a little mini garden bar and there’s lots of garden furniture outside surrounded by trees and really lovely plants so it’s just a really awesome place to hang out.

But that’s it for this winery because we’re heading to our next winery. What’s really cool about taking these bike from winery to winery is passing through the awesome landscape passing through rows and rows of different vineyards which is quite hypnotic and there’s also forest and awesome rive views to be had as well.

So we just arrived at Nautilus which is apparently one of the best ones here. Look at this entrance. That’s a big Nautilus isn’t it?

As soon as we arrive in Nautilus, Karen takes the time to show us a little bit of the area and help us get our bearings by showing us which winery we have already visited and which ones we’re going to visit today then we put the naughty in Nautilus by trying some champagne.

Yum yum yum the wine is tasting better by the minute and I think I know why we are about lunch time and we haven’t eaten anything just yet yet we have drunk a tonne of wine. So everything we’re tasting is tasting absolutely delicious and Laura and I are just on a little cloud right now but we are not going to have lunch at Nautilus we are going to a very famous winery called Giesen for lunch and it’s just across the road which is really cool because we’re starting to get really hungry.

The views at Giesen are absolutely amazing and the wine selection is gigantic. It’s a pretty awesome place to grab lunch so we’re getting ourselves a table order a massive platter of heaps of local food and we’re diving in.

The waitress takes the time to name absolutely everything on this delicious vintage platter. There’s really an awesome selection here one of the stand outs here for me is the green shell mussels which is another big produce of the Marlborough region after that delicious lunch and getting a bit of food in our bellies we are moving onto our final winery of the day getting some awesome of the Marlborough region along the way biking alongside the river and more vineyards.

The last winery that we’re visiting today is Huia. They are kind of the hippies of the area. They area biodynamic winery meaning that they try to use much much less chemicals stuff than any other winery in the area. It’s really cool.

All there wines are actually really tasty and super sweet which is really to the pleasure of Laura and I because as she mentioned before we don’t really have the most refined palette in the whole wide world but we do like a good sweet drink.

Our lovely host which is a backpacker from the UK is telling us more about what biodynamic means which is basically animals and plants working together like it should in order to avoid using any pesticides it’s a really cool way to make wine and it results into super tasting beverages.

I am now a Rose, hey Hose what do you like? I like Rose.

Oh my God. Help.

Cut.