On Friday, March 20th here in New Zealand, (still Thursday the 19th back home) we started out after breakfast on bicycles borrowed from our hosts here at the B&B. They also supplied us with a map of the surrounding area which noted all of the wineries which had “cellar doors”, meaning an open area where wine is sold retail and tasting can be had.

(Brenda at a typical "cellar door")

The Marlborough region, where we’re located, is the main wine producing area of NZ and there are wineries of various sizes, from a few acres operated by a couple and their children to huge operations with tractor trailers (“articulated lorries”) backed up to loading docks and rows of vines as far as the eye could see. We made our way to as many of these cellar doors as we could. By the time we had hit the first five or so I was very glad the motorcycle was safely locked away in the garage back at the B&B. Most of the cellar doors are like showrooms, quite nicely appointed, with knowledgeable staff (though with our limited information on good wine, they might as well have been less qualified) and interesting varieties of wines mostly not sold in the US.  Apparently these small operations don’t find the US market large enough (due, I suppose to the crowd of others both domestic and foreign) to make it worth the transport costs and getting through our somewhat over-complicated laws on importing alcohol.  The grapes here seem smaller than what I’ve seen in similar places in the US and each winery has it’s own variations as well.  It was most pleasant bicycling through the vineyard area here in New Zealand broad expanses of neat rows of vines bordered on all sides by high mountains. The vines are in most cases covered with netting which is obviously frustrating to the birds which flock around trying to find an open spot to grab the  tasty fruit..

(Brenda at the smallest cellar we visited. This woman and her husband started this winery as a labor of love and are doing all parts of the process, from growing to pressing to bottling and distribution, themselves.)

We ate lunch at the Wairiu winery where we sat at table outside under shelter, surrounded by vines and consumed excellent salads with, of course, still more wine. At the next table sit a couple who kept looking at us and we kept looking at them both of us sure we had seen the other before. The man of the couple looked remarkably like John Cleese from Monty Python in his later years. Finally the woman asked if we hadn’t been on the  Taleri Gorge train ride back in Dunedin few weeks ago and we then realized that we shared a car with them. They had been traveling this whole time as well, after visiting their daughter who had moved from Britain to New Zealand. They had just come from Kaikorua where they had done a whale watching adventure. This was something that we had planned and they advised us not to take the boat, as we had intended, since the wife of this couple, like Brenda, has some difficulty with sea sickness. They had done a 30 minute helicopter ride instead of the 3 hour boat tour and said they found it much superior. Prior to our experience at Fox Glacier, I might not have believed that but I am now firmly convinced.  It had never been in my paradigm of the world to just hire a helicopter to go see something, but here in NZ they are as common as taxicabs in the sightseeing areas.  While a bit expensive, the price in US dollars (thanks to the exchange rate at the moment) isn’t exorbitant at all and, given the time a boat takes to get to the area for viewing, the price for time spent there is about the same..  The Fox Glacier experience worked out to be about $10 per minute for the two of us for a 30 minute view that was well worth it and impossible to duplicate in any other way (except climbing up the mountain, which wasn’t really an option for us.)  At our age, these experiences have a definite “sell by” date and this was not to be missed.
 
We continued on our two-wheeled (human powered variety) tour of the wine country, stopping again an hour or so after lunch for a pastry break at Michel something-or-other (hey, we’d been to a lot of cellar doors by then !) where I had an interesting type of apple custard tart and a “long black” out on the sunny patio.  I could get used to this.

(John, doing what he does best, waiting for pastry to arrive, at Michel Something-or-Other winery)

Late in the day we finally wended our way back to our lodgings so that we could walk back to a pub for dinner.  We selected the Old English Pub, which turned out to be the only place I’d seen Guinness on draft here in NZ.  Feeling something like a traitor for abandoning my quest for local brews, I couldn’t resist the creamy black concoction that in my view, forms the standard for “good beer”.
 
Back on the motorcycle tomorrow.

We eventually made our way to the wine country on the east coast, coming out of the gorge and central mountains into the wider plains and much less grand peaks of the east.  It looks for all the world like the Sonoma Valley in California, which I guess makes sense given the wine connection.  We stopped at the “i” in Renwick, which turned out to be located in a yarn and crafts store so crowded with a jumble of merchandise that one had to walk a narrow path to get in the door and over to where the proprietress, a thin lady appearing to be in her 60’s, was fussing with some stock.  We told her what we were looking for in a room for two days and she quickly made a phone call, then stepped out into the street with us to give us directions and went back to her work.  
 
Our place turned out to be a B & B in a home up on the hill just above the main road into town.  It was “the Old Mill House” referring to the previous owner, the manager of the lumber mill in town.  The woodwork in the house was fantastic, all native woods, simply but very nicely done. I think Hubert Burton would love this house.  Our host, Robert, is a man of somewhat smaller stature with a neatly trimmed grey goatee and an infectious grin that taken altogether remind one somewhat of a leprechaun (yes, I know, wrong country, but hey, I did see a rainbow here).  He has a Moto Guzzi California in the garage and photos on the wall of him riding it in the Brass Monkey Rally down here, covered in snow.  B&B’s here, as in every other country we’ve been in except the US, are not at all pretentious and are, in fact just what the name implies…a bed and breakfast the next morning.  Here, as in all the others, the room is clean, private and breakfast wonderful.

Robert also has bicycles for hire, but offered free to paying guests of the B&B.   We determined to stay over two nights and use his bikes for a tour of the wine country.

(Brenda on the porch at the Old Mill House)

(A short walk from the Old Mill is the old Cork & Keg....with the only Guinness on tap I've seen so far down here)

The next morning the rain had cleared, though it was cold, somewhere in the 60’s.  We set out for the inland highway, abandoning the coast to its storms.  On the way out of town we were going to stop to see a seal colony, but we learned that the seals had revolted, declared independence and were no longer a colony, so we moved on