We had set up our pick-up with Nigel from Wine Tours By Bike for 9:45 in the morning. After squaring away the campervan, we walked out onto the street of the holiday park just as Nigel was pulling up. Great timing. He picked up one more couple who were visiting from Holland and we set off for his home. Him and his wife run a B&B as well as the bike rentals. Once we arrived, we got set up with our bikes and helmets. The bikes had saddlebags over the rear wheels with pockets for two bottles aside. After getting our maps from Nigel, we were off.
Generally, the region is known for their white wines, and in particular, their sauvignon blanc's. Many of the vineyards produce pinot noir's, and pinot gris is a popular grape grown in the region. Other than the pinot noir, not many red wines are grown in the region due to the cold climate.
Our first stop was at Wither Hills. They export some of their stuff to Canada so I expect to be talking to our local wine merchant about their Sauvignon Blanc and their Pinot Noir. I bought a bottle of their 2005 pinot noir, which was the last vintage which they cork capped. Most of the vineyards use metal caps as they're just more economical. They were a good first stop as Jen, their tasting expert, took all of us through how to taste wine. It was similar to what I've learned about scotch tasting, and was almost the same lecture we got from the tour guide at Speight's. Your sense of smell plays a big role in how you taste something, and with anything, it's imperative to savour something with the nose, as well as the tongue. Her speil consisted of telling us to swirl our wine to aerate the liquid, causing the different scents to come out. She followed it up by encouraging us to almost slurp our wine. This is so that we can take in a bit of air as it hits our tongue and further enhance the taste.
We left for our next stop and on our way there, the guy from the Dutch couple passed us cycling back to Nigel's. They had left Wither Hills before us, not really liking the wine and his girlfriend blew out a tire on the way to Villa Maria. Overall, we liked the wine at Wither Hills better, they happened to like Villa Maria. The stop was still worthwhile, in that we have now discovered a new white grape called viognier. Initial impressions were it had a bit less acidity than a riesling, and finished strongly. We'll have to look for more of this later and see if it's one that will make it into the usual rotation.
Winery #3 consisted of Highfield Estate. This one is perched on a hill above the main road and I took the opportunity to burn a little adrenalin by sprinting up the hill. I got to the top, dismounted, and waited for my wife to join me. About 30 seconds later, she finally appeared, walking her bike up. I'll have to make sure she does more biking next year back in Edmonton. Nigel had recommended this place as a good place to sit down and have a meal. He did tell us that we should order our food first, and then do our wine tasting, but the desire for libations took over and after taking in the views from the top of their tower, we began the tasting. Jenny loved their riesling, as well as the riesling desert wine, and after lunch, she bought a bottle of the riesling to take home. We're now up to bottle number two, in just three wineries. This theme will continue. Lunch was great, and despite the cloudy day, we had lunch outdoors on their patio.
While we were up in the tower, Jenny and the guy in the Dutch couple had noticed the windmills dotting the landscape. A few guesses were tossed around on their purpose. I figured low yield electrical generation. Jenny figured wind powered pump systems. Turns out, they're frost control fans. The region receives an average of 6 days of frost each year and to ensure they don't lose a crop, they use fans to reverse the temperature inversion by forcing the cold air out from over the grapes, causing the warmer air to descend and keep the grapes around 2-3 degrees. For vineyards which have too many hills and valleys, rather than using turbines, they'll actually bring in hundreds of helicopters to hover over the grapes and force the warm air down. Considering that several million dollars could be lost each year across the vineyards due to a crop lost due to frost, these extreme measures do make sense. Suffice to say, the locals don't sleep too well on frosty nights and it's not because they're sick with worry.
Winery #4 was Isabel Estates, who exports some of their stuff out to Canada. They're not big on entering their wines into competitions, feeling that people will appreciate their wines without needing a bunch of award stickers to cover the bottle. That being said, their wines are being served on Emirates airlines in First Class so that should say something about quality. While sampling, we learned that the business is completely run by their family and everybody, down to the daughters, is involved in the production. The youngest daughter was the one who explained their various vintages to us, and after asking us where we were visiting from, she introduced us to her older sister who just happened to have spent a year in Banff working and seeing the Rockies. We had a bit of an exchange as to why we'd come down to New Zealand for our honeymoon when so much of it is similar to Canada. She accepted our explanation that only having to drive 4 hours either east or west to get to the coast is preferable to 14. We didn't purchase anything here but certainly liked the landscape and the conversation.
At this point, we got a bit lost. The wine trail map isn't necessarily the clearest, and we ended up cycling in, through, and around the town of Renwick until finally getting to winery #5, Mahi. Even then, this wasn't an easy one to find as they don't have a sign on the road, and on Nigel's route, the sign is angled the wrong way. I just happened to look over and so their sign over my shoulder. I started yelling at Jenny but she was too far down the road by this point to hear me, and she ended up sprinting past Gibson Bridge as well. I caught up to her and turned us around. Mahi had a decent pinot gris and it was here that Jenny decided that pinot gris might be her new favorite white. The riesling has finally been dethroned. I'd slowly been working her towards pinot gris, and the reason for it comes from winery #6.
Gibson Bridge has a very humble story. Four years ago, the proprietors didn't know a thing about winemaking. They just knew what they liked. After retiring, they started growing pinot gris on their small plot of 6 acres, miniscule by most vineyard standards, but they treated each grape like their child. They put netting up over the grapes once they've reached a certain maturity to ensure that birds don't get at them. At picking time, each grape is picked by hand and any that don't meet their standards are discarded. The time and care they put into their boutique wines shows, and with their first vintage of pinot gris (which I purchased a bottle of), they won so many awards that it's hard to put all the stickers onto the bottle. Howard, one of the proprietors, told us that he loves a pinot gris because it's a bit of a bold wine. It has a smooth clean taste, and finished strong and sharp, which makes it great to have with red meat. His wife happens to like their 2008 pinot gris quite a bit more due to the fact that it's a fair bit sweeter, which just happened to strike Jenny's palate in just the right way and we also took a bottle of this with us. 4 bottles, 6 vineyards and our average is holding out.
We skipped two of Nigel's suggestions, Framingham and Bladen, mostly because he didn't highlight these as having a decent red which is something I was looking for. Instead, we went to Forrest and found our next two finds. They're different in that they charge $5 for their tastings, while the others are free. Nigel did save us on this one by giving us a voucher for the tasting. Trevor, the tasting manager of the day, let us choose 6 wines out of their 12 to try and we had settled on a pinot gris, a riesling, a sauvignon blanc, a riesling desert wine, a pinot noir and a merlot. While neither of the red's left an impression on me, the savignon blanc and the riesling dessert wine we both enjoyed and walked out with. At this point, an American tour group had arrived, and I'd told one of them about Wine Tastes in Queenstown as they were going there next and had a few questions as to how they would transport their wine back home. Wine Tastes had these great polystyrene containers perfectly moulded for a bottle of wine. Jenny and I picked up enough for four bottles of wine, and by this point, we've got a problem. We're up to 6 bottles, we've got four packing containers, and Customs will only let us bring four bottles. I'm weighing the decision between shipping the whole lot of just paying the duty on the excess. Still figuring out what's cheaper.
After Forrest, we raced to Fromm, which Nigel had pointed out to me because they had a very good pinot noir. Fromm was started by a Swiss national and a few partners when winemaking had just started in the region. They run two labels, La Strada and Fromm, La Strada being their "cheap" label. Cheap doesn't mean bad, and in fact, their La Strada Syrah was so good that I had to make it bottle number 7. We decided to hit our last winery, River Farm, and met up with an older couple who were also renting from Nigel. After hurrying through our tasting, and not really finding anything that suited us, we tried to hurry back to meet up with Nigel for our 5:30 ride home. We ended up being about 10 minutes late, and luckily the Dutch couple had agreed to wait for us so we didn't miss our ride. As I poured into Nigel's driveway, I took a bit of a skid on the gravel but kept it together without breaking anything.
With the day finished, we had a few aches and pains but it was well worth it. I'd do another wine tour by bike in a heartbeat. Paul, the owner of the holiday park we stayed at, told us to come see him when we got in as he'd give us some recommendations on what to do on the North Island as he spent more than half his life up there. He told us that Wellington, while a nice city, is just another city and that after taking in Te Papa, the national museum, we could just hit the road and not bother with a second night. He also told us that the hot pools will be a good visit after all the biking and hiking that we've been doing, and that the luge in Rotorua kicks Queenstown's butt. We'll be doing that one for sure. We told him of our plans to do the Flying Fox at Gravity Canyon and he highly recommended it. Back in the campervan, we cracked open the bottle of Pinot Noir from Wither Hills, had a nice lamb dinner, and settled in for the evening.