Nothing to ‘wine’ about on this spectacular day!

80% of New Zealand’s wine is produced in Marlborough. We almost bypassed this stop because while I love white wine, Sauvignon Blanc is rarely my pick. And in Canada, NZ wine = Sauv. But thank goodness we didn’t, because a) seems this area produces amazing Rieslings, and b) on my growing list of ‘favorite days’ this turned out to be one more for the top of the list!

The base town for the Marlborough region (Blenheim) was pretty Bleh, so we weren’t entirely expecting the day to be so spectacular. A great reminder about judging a book by its cover… and the weather was perfection, which helped get us off to a great start.

So we rented bikes from Bike2wine and set out to see how many Cellar doors we could hit before they all closed at 4:30.

We started at Forrest where I developed an intricate rating system for the day.

By our next stop, simpler method was needed. It continued to evolve as the day went on.

We stopped for lunch at Geisen where they have cornered the market (with good reason) on platters.

(Thank goodness we got a before shot since the after only includes that leaf of lettuce and a lemon wedge. Even the decorative morsels of it were totally delicious!)

We continued on with the biking and tasting. It was leisurely, spectacular and so much fun.

Also, last week on Waiheke Island we had discovered this amazing book:

And today, we got to meet some of its stars!

It was a super-spectacular day and for those of you keeping track, we made it to 9 cellar doors and tasted many wines.

But the day didn’t end there. Jay had made a reservation months ago for one of the top-rated restaurants in the area. It was a great way to end a great day!

And, they had one more dog for jay to pet.

This is Charlie.

And that was our day in Marlborough. Tomorrow, we’re off to Abel Tasman park. More adventures to come!