Precious pinot

Well, today was our last day at work! This is exciting because it means we are officially on the road again! And sad, because we have both become quite fond of our Kiwi coworkers and will miss them. It was a wonderful experience to work with Kiwis - we feel like we learned something new about the country everyday! This education included an induction to their "language" because they used words we did not understand like "jandals" (flip-flops), "plasters" (band-aids), and "ice blocks" (popsicle). But this education also taught us much about their country, the people, their politics, and the best places to find penguins or geothermal pools.

You are probably dying to know what we have been doing on the vineyards the last few weeks, right? Well, lets just say that now we have a VERY good understanding of why some wines are SO freakin' expensive. We have spent the last 1 1/2 weeks coddling, babying, and singing to the Pinot Noir grapes at the Stoneleigh vineyards. Stoneleigh is owned by Montana Brancott, and thus by Pernod Ricard. I guess their Pinot Noir always wins various wine awards, and we know why! It must be because of all of us hard-working casual vineyard workers! Last week we plucked leaves off all the vines to expose the grapes to the sun. This week we walked down the rows and trimmed off root stock (stalks growing essentially up from the root of the vine) and tucked wandering vines and grapes back in place. And at the end of the week we started fruit thinning. This takes FOREVER. Jay and I barely finish 2 rows in a day! We basically look at all the fruit and decide what fruit gets to stay and become that amazing wine and what fruit has to go to allow the "chosen" grapes to become spectacular. Our coworker Shirley told us that every time we touch a row of vines, the price of the wine goes up by a dollar. True! Imagine the cost of about 10-12 workers all going up and down the rows doing this task for 8 hrs a day - and it will take almost a week for the thinning of this one block! This job not only showed us why good wines are so expensive, but it also opened our eyes to the hard work that people put into growing these grapes. It is not the winemaker out there getting those grapes ready for the wine, it is hard-working locals (and some backpackers) making a living on the vineyards that make that wine so darn good. SO grab a bottle of Kiwi wine, pay the price for it, it's worth it - and kick back and have a toast to those vineyard workers....

Speaking of buying wine - yesterday was our last stint at the various cellar doors and I've got our last wine blog for you! After all this time here we still did not manage to get to all the wineries! Shocking. Anyway, we tried hard. We found excellent wines at Te Whare Ra (pronounced te far-a ra, the "wh" here is pronounced as an "f"), a small family-owned vineyard. They didn't have a single wine we disliked! An additional bonus - the winemaker himself poured our wine for us and answered tons of questions we had about winemaking. The 2007 Toru was a blend of Riesling, Pinot Gris, and Gewurztraminer - a rare combo and wonderfully yummy and creative. Look for their Pinot Noir and Gewurztraminer too. They are exported to the states by Fredrick Wildman (www.fredrickwildman.com). We also loved Nautilus wines. Although Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Noirs create the fame for this region, we found that we were not huge fans of these wines at many of the wineries. At Nautilus, however, we loved them both! Framingham specializes in Rieslings (which were great, especially the 06 Classic), but their dessert wine (Noble Selection 07) blew every other dessert wine we have had away (except Prager Port, my favorite dessert wine from CA). Huia is exported right to Boston (Classic Wine Imports), so you should be able to find this golden label with a feather on it fairly easily. The winery is named after an extinct NZ bird - a neat bird because the male and female had different shaped beaks. Neat. Their 05 Sauv. Blanc and 06 Pinot Noir were great. But man, I wish all the wineries would age their red wines a bit longer....

OK - to summarize all our tastings. Julie's favorite winery = Lawsons Dry Hills and Jay's favorite = Bladen (which you can't get in the states). We feel bad naming our favorites, though because almost every winery we mentioned had something we loved. If you are really curious about NZ wines and can't find any of the wines we suggested FEAR NOT, chances are any NZ wine you find will be pretty darn good. Why? Here is an interesting, although unconfirmed fact. We heard that all the vineyards in NZ alone do not even equal the size of one of the large label vineyards in Australia, like Banrock Station or Yellowtail. Therefore, even the largest wineries here are still VERY small in comparison to the rest of the winemaking giants. That means almost every winery here is like a boutique winery. Pretty neat eh? Now go get em' .... Good on ya.