Laura was her usual exuberant self when we woke up this morning, but I was still reeling a little bit from the upper respiratory bug I picked up a couple of days ago. So we decided to spend an extra day in Queenstown to rest up a bit, and spend a few hours getting our first taste of New Zealand wines in one of the country's lesser-known wine regions: Central Otago.
This region is much better known for its fruit farming, and indeed the first stop we made was at a cherry tree farm where a crunchy French guy sold Laura a kilo bag of the best cherries either of us have ever had in our lives.
In addition to cherries, we saw enormous olive orchards, peach orchards and apricot orchards dotting the region.
And of course, this sign here at the town limits of Cromwell, NZ says it all...
But forget the fruit--let's get into the wine! We visited two distinct wine sub-regions within Central Otago region: Cromwell and Brannockburn. Both areas are building a solid reputation for rieslings and pinot noirs.
You can see quite a few nascent grape plantings dotting the various foothills throughout the area as winemaking begins to get a foothold here.
We really had a blast winetasting here, in part because it's fun seeing how new wineries try to establish themselves when they are first starting out. Some of them clearly love what they do, it's obvious when they talk lovingly about their wines. That was what happened at our very first stop, Aurum Winery, where we tasted and bought a couple of bottles of really good reisling and chardonnay.
A few minutes after we arrived a couple of guys came in after us, both visibly limping. We struck up a conversation and learned that they competed in a local team triathlon the day before. One of the guys did the biking segment (uh, that's 112 miles), and the other guy--he was limping the worst of the two--did the running segment (26.2 miles). As they say here: good on ya!
Of course other wineries aren't quite so casual and unpretentious. Instead, they try really, really hard to go high end, and sometimes it doesn't come off as well. This winery, Carrick Wines, dressed its pourers in black outfits, gave them a script to memorize about each wine, and charged twice as much per bottle:
The huge guy in the blue shirt in this picture ended up following us to the next winery. He was a pontificatory English guy who had all the answers about wine--and he couldn't help but share all his knowledge with everyone within earshot. Naturally when we saw him turn left out of the parking lot, we went in the other direction, fast.
Here I am at Bald Hills winery, spending still more of the money we "saved." Of course we can only bring back two bottles on the flight home, so I guess we'll have to drink most of what we buy right here!
This picture was after we left our fourth winery. I think. Come to think of it, I don't really remember anymore.
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