Cloudless at Cloudy Bay

Mission Accomplished!
Dunc at Wither Hills
Wither Hills Abundant Fruit

Pat reserved bicycles on the Malborough Wine Trail and Ian consulted with us about the wineries, shops and restaurants on the trail. Congenial Nigel at Wine Tours by Bike refined our winery choices and helped set up our itinerary. The day was warm and the sun shone on the vines surrounded by bare brown hills to the south and forested green ones to the north. Our first stop was Wither Hills, a beautiful winery owned by Kirin, a Japanese firm, which according to Ian, is looking to sell if you have a few spare millions. We relished all their wines and enjoyed tasting the different types of grapes, planted in straight rows and labelled in front of the winery. The grapes all tasted delicious, sweeter than I expected, with very chewy skins. We purchased a bottle of their Pinot Gris and hopped back on the bikes heading to the mythical Cloudy Bay Winery on a perfectly cloudless day.
Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc remains one of our favourite wines. It developed a cult following in Toronto about fifteen years ago when the wine writers sang its praises in the local press. It was offered by Vintages at the LCBO about once a year, and we’d have to line up and take numbers at least a half hour before the store opened. We generally enlisted the help of a teetotalling friend and bought 3 bottles each to hoard in our wine cellar bringing it out for special occasions or our week in Stratford with our wine-loving friends. Regretfully the price doubled over time, but it is now easily available. The firm was purchased by the French luxury goods conglomerate Louis Vuitton so that accounts for the increase. New Zealand friends say that it is overpriced and that there are other Sauvignons that are even better at a lower price. We made it our mission to find them, but we were determined to visit their winery too.
We approached the winery with some trepidation thinking it might be a bit snobby, but of course this is New Zealand, not France. Staff were smiling and eager to set up a flight of wines, and we tasted most of what was on offer. Since we can easily purchase the Pelorus, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay in Toronto, we bought the Gewurztraminer and the Late Harvest Reisling, both superb. The winery graciously agreed to look after our wine until the next day. We had wine paniers on the bikes and no locks for the bikes but were warned to keep the helmets with us as some had been pinched recently. We had to sign an agreement that we would cover the cost of pinched helmets (but not bikes!), so we decided to leave our precious bottles behind for a while. A helmet pincher might conceivably have excellent taste in wine!
On to Allan Scott across the road for more tasting (their wines are not to our taste) and a delicious lunch in their garden, marred only by the fact that the kitchen was so slow, we left our desserts behind in frustration after waiting 45 minutes for them after we drank our flat whites. The clock was ticking and we had miles (of wineries) to go before we slept!
We made it to No. 1, a family owned winery producing only bubbly. We struck up a conversation with the young NZ host to find that his father is French from Epernay and his mother is English, but he and his sister are Kiwi through and through having been raised and educated here. He told us his father’s family practically disowned him when he established himself in NZ and said they would never visit. Within a year they descended on Marlborough. Our host treated us to at taste of Remy, named for him on his 21st birthday and showed us a bottle named after his sister, on hers - lucky offspring. When we came to No. 1 Cuvee, I realized this was the champagne I served at Duncan’s 60th and also to our Stratford-visiting friends, so some of you will have tasted it. We reserved a bottle along with a special stopper – I can’t drink ½ bottle at one time - and headed to Highfield Estates with beautiful views from the tower, then Villa Maria where we tasted but didn’t purchase. We were happily tired of cycling and sated by all the tasting (hic).