Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Busman's Holiday


Some New Zealand Hotties

Before it is all gone from my ever-diminishing capacity, I would like to jot down some notes on Margo and my trip through the South Island wine regions.

We set off later than planned, after consuming Crom-Vegas' finest breakfast with Sonja at Fusee Rouge. Our first day's travel took us across the lower passes of the Southern Alps and on into Christchurch - an artsy town filled with cruising boy racers and an Anglican cathedral. From CHCH we headed up the coast highway 1, through Canterbury and on into The Waipara - NZ's most developing wine district. After visiting the beautiful premises of Pegasus Bay and its estate vineyards, we hied forward to the Waipara Food & Wine Celebration - a lucky unplanned happenstance. Here, amid whitebait patties, saxaphone quartets and picnicking Kiwis, were able to taste all the Waipara had to offer, including those of Danny Schuster and Alan McCorkindale. Our favorite by far was Mountford, who offered not only a dense and aromatic Pinot, but also a sparkly rose under screwcap. As a side note, the Mountford wines are made by a blind man, who obviously rises to his particular challenges.

Tempting as they were, we left the accordians and hay bales behind us, and forged forward up the East Coast. Passing through santa cruzy Kaikoura and flanked by the railroad tracks on one side and the Pacific on the other, we found our way to Blenheim, epicenter of the Marlborough wine region. Everywhere you look in Marlborough there are grapevines, seas of them stretching flat from the ocean up to the foothills, broken only by the occasional array of shiny stainless steel tanks pushing up through the green canopy.

We would have been lost in this flood of Sauvignon blanc, were it not for the expert navigation of our friend Jonas VanDerPol. Jonas has moved back to the region after a number of foreign vintages, including two in the Willamette Valley. Prior to that, he worked for Cloudy Bay and a few other Marlborough producers of note. With Mr. J at the helm, we ploughed our way through nine wineries in the course of one day! We visited Mt Riley, Villa Maria, Allan Scott, Isabel, Fromm, St. Clair, Cloudy Bay, Seresin and Lawson's, and attempted but were unable to visit Montana, Wither Hills and Spy Valley.


Marlborough is the home of New Zealand Sauvignon blanc - the engine that drives the country's entire wine industry. An engine fueled by gooseberries, greased with capsicum (green pepper) and sparked with aromas of cat pee. We tasted plenty of bad examples, and a few good ones, including of course Cloudy Bay's, but it was pinot we were really after. The best reds we tasted were at Isabel - a very Oregon style pinot - and at Fromm, where the Syrah was also a standout and the riesling was good. Both wineries have old, densely planted, and meticulously tended vineyards.

We had a fantastic time staying in Blenheim with Jonas' wife Sue at her parents Barrie and Raewyn Parker's tidy home. I'm no southern belle, but the 'kindness of strangers' indeed.

The following day we convoyed around the Marlborough Sounds, the long way to Nelson and Jonas' home. We stopped in Hamilton for the requisite green lips - they are grown in The Sounds along seeded lengths of chain - and continued over the banged-up Pelorus River Bridge and onto Tasman Bay. Once out of The Sounds, as in Blenheim, any land too steep for vines or sheep is planted with pine trees. New Zealand climate is a such that these trees mature fully in 29 years, creating soft wood unfit for building timber, but ideal for the pulp mills in Japan and through Asia. The Nelson area in the north of the island used to be planted to tabacco, but is now cultivating grapes, hops, orchard fruits, and a bit of green tea. The VanDerPols have a pear orchard in Motueka beyond Nelson and a nursery and vineyard at their home a bit outside of the town. We were welcomed by two dachshunds and a tray of gin and tonics.
Job (Jan Joseph) and Jos VanDerPol live perched atop a tractor shed overlooking their spread in a cozy home filled with books, boomerang children and the smell of homecooked meals. Margo and I did manage to visit a few more wineries, including Waimea Estate - where sister Wietske VanDerPol is a winemaker - Seifried, and Neudorf - the latter being our favorite. Mostly we explored bohemian Nelson, walked on the beach, made stovetop espressos and sampled Jos' homemade fruit eau du vie.

It wasn't all wine mind you. I spent a good week exploring the (Wet) West Coast.
Watch out Sir Edmund

There were glacier hikes (Fox Glacier) and lakeside bikes (Lake Kaniere), as well as quiet days on driftwood beaches and drizzly nights spent sharing dirty jokes (Hokitika). It seems like months - it has been - since I wandered back through the VanDerPol and Parker households - my ankles covered in sandfly bites and my eyes filled with visions of snow covered peaks seen from wave swept beaches - on my way across to the North Island.

Marge went native in a big way. Just don't make her mad and you'll be right

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