Blenheim Wine Tour - WINERY Destinations | Highlight Wine Tours Marlborough NZ
Located at the top of the South Island of New Zealand, Marlborough’s picturesque landscape boasts record sunshine hours and the largest wine growing region in New Zealand. Read more on
The Wairau River Basin has been transformed from an intensive horticultural, sheep farming and cropping area to a wine industry experiencing unbelievable growth.
As a result of the burgeoning wine industry, Marlborough has achieved recognition as one of the most progressive and prosperous centres of New Zealand.
Many varieties of grape are grown here including Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Reisling and Gewurztraminer.
However, the Marlborough wine region is especially recognised for its production of its unsurpassed Sauvignon Blanc.
This quality wine demonstrates Marlborough’s aspirations by achieving top awards and accolades throughout Europe, the United Kingdom and America.
The location of the greater majority of the selected sites visited are within a 60km circuit from the Blenheim township the principal town of the Marlborough province.
We have received TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence every year since 2011.
A selection of location that may be included in your day:
- Bladen Wines
- Brancott Estate
- Cloudy Bay Estate
- Framingham Wines
- Fromm Winery
- Georges Michel Wine Estate
- Gibson Bridge Wines
- Mahi Wines
- Grove Mill Wines
- Hans Herzog Estate
- Hunter’s Wines
- Lake Chalice Wines
- Lawsons Dry Hills Winery
- Nautilus Estate
- Saint Clair Estate and Cafe
- Spy Valley Wines
- Te Whare Ra Vineyard & Winery
- Villa Maria Estate
- Wairau River Wines
Wine Food Flavour - Anna Flowerday Te Whare Ra Winemaker
Wine Food Flavour - Anna Flowerday Te Whare Ra Winemaker.
Interview with Anna Flowerday filmed at the wonderful Wine Station in Blenheim New Zealand
Te Whare Ra (TWR) is a small vineyard and winery located in the Marlborough sub-region of Renwick, owned by winemakers – Anna & Jason Flowerday. The 11 Ha vineyard which has predominantly loam over clay soils, is one of the oldest in Marlborough, originally planted in 1979. Yields are kept low, the vineyard is managed with a combination of organic and biodynamic practices and all the fruit is hand picked and hand-sorted.
The wines are made with minimal intervention in a small winery which has been specifically set up for small batch winemaking. TWR produces Gewürztraminer, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, an aromatic blend called Toru, Rose, Pinot Noir and Syrah. Our Cellar Door is open for wine sales and tastings from November till we start harvest in March. During this time we’re open weekdays from 11 – 4 and some weekends when the vineyard and family time permits.
Our yields are kept very low and the vineyard is managed with a combination of organic and biodynamic practices. The vineyard is planted to 7 different varieties with a selection of clones of ~ Gewürztraminer, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Syrah.
Our vineyard is hand-tended as much as humanly possible as we feel that a person can treat each vine individually and coax the best from it rather than a machine which does the exact same thing to each vine. It does mean more time and effort but we think it is more than worth it for the resultant quality.
Our aim is to grow great quality fruit and this starts with great quality dirt or Good Dirt. If a vine has a good start in the soil it can grow fruit which is balanced in all its components, is physiologically ripe and therefore requires minimal winemaking intervention once we get it in the winery. This means a cropping level which is controlled and so we do selective crop thinning at a number of key times during the growing season.
2014 marked the 35th anniversary of the first plantings at Te Whare Ra and also the release of our wines with the newly updated Single Vineyard 5182 series labels. We released our aromatics with this new label as well as Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Syrah. This journey started out in 1979 with the Te Whare Ra original plantings which are now the oldest vines in the Marlborough region. We have chosen to use our organic certification number 5182 to celebrate what this place has now become.
5182 is of huge significance to us as it is our vineyard designation number from BIOGRO New Zealand. This number represents all our hard work and effort over the past 11 years to achieve our organic certification. Our SV 5182 wines represent all the things that we feel are important – provenance, organic farming and authentic, world class wines from Marlborough.
Being both winemakers, when we first talked about doing our own thing – we decided that having our own winery was of paramount importance. It meant we could pick things when we wanted to and make them exactly how we wanted to, without having to make any of the compromises involved in making our wines in a contract facility.
The winery building here at Te Whare Ra had very humble beginnings as a tractor shed and has been added to over time. Our winery is a bit like us – not flashy, not showy and very down to earth!
It is set up for small batch, hands on winemaking which is what we focus on. It not an architectural marvel or an iconic showpiece but we saw function as being the key factor rather than form. But have made no compromises and spared no expense when it comes to the functions and equipment that are important for wine quality.
All our fruit is picked by hand and then collected and brought straight into the winery where it is hand sorted before it is processed any further. We also have a small cold room which we use for chilling the fruit down before processing.
We have set the winery up with lots of small tanks (i.e 600lts and up) which means we can keep each vineyard parcel (clone, soil type, vine age) separate and also experiment with lots of different techniques. We also upgraded the antiquated cooling system which means we can now control the temperature on all the white tanks individually.
All the reds are berry sorted and then moved by gravity to small open vats for fermentation. All the red ferments are hand plunged and the size of the vats is again important for keeping our parcels separate and giving us more options when it comes to blending.
We believe that all the manipulation and intervention should be done in the vineyard and like our winemaking to be as natural as possible.
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Vineyard Opera
Harvest time in Waipara - the beauty of having an operatic choir helping out.
Glenkilrie Bed and Breakfast Video Tour
Glenkilrie Bed and Breakfast is set in its own grounds on a real working farm 12 miles south of Glenshee Ski Slopes.
Accommodation consists of two double rooms and one twin room, both include hostess trolleys. Each room has it's own private bathroom comprising of bath / shower, toilet and wash hand basin. All bedrooms are tastefully decorated, spacious and centrally heated.
There is a guest lounge with open log fire and television downstairs.
At Glenkilrie House breakfast is served in the family dining room. Fruit juice, a selection of cereals, toast with homemade marmalade or jam, tea or coffee and a fully cooked breakfast is always offered to guests.
If you stay here you will more than likely bump into the deer that live in the field behind the B&B. They are really friendly and will come to the window to say hello!
Wine Food Flavour. Marcus Wright Lawson's Dry Hills Winemaker
Wine, Food, Flavour. Marcus Wright - Lawson's Dry Hills Winemaker.
Marcus Wright joins us at The Wine Station to discuss how he likes to make wine and the flavours that influence him.
He talks about food pairing, and what sommelier can expect and what he thinks makes a great vintage wine .
Marcus’s love of good wine came from friends passionate about NZ’s Wine Options competition. He joined them for various tastings and then competed as part of the team. In 1997 he worked with Montana as a cellar hand during vintage and then as their Cellarmaster. He then headed to South America to work the 2000 vintage in Chile for Vina San Pedro, in the Central Valley. Next was the Loire Valley, France for vintage with the highly-respected Jacques Lurton, making white wines including Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc. Marcus started with Lawson’s Dry Hills in 2001 and continues to enjoy producing a number of wine styles from the company’s vineyards.
You’ll always receive a warm welcome at our home on Alabama Road. There’s at least six wines open for you to taste and often something a little unusual as well. For example, it might be our special co-fermented aromatic wine that we made just 50 cases of to commemorate our 25th year in 2017, or one of our very limited Pioneer wines. We have been known to offer a taste of our rich and hedonistic ‘sticky’ wines too and sometimes a little something from Blind River. Visit us during harvest and you can taste the juice from grapes pressed that day!
We also offer local cheeses, cured meats and salmon so you can ‘pick your own platter’ or bring your own picnic and enjoy some nibbles with a glass of our wine.
#winefoodflavour #stucam #lawsonsdryhills
When you combine more than 25 years’ experience with an inquisitive spirit, the result is a perfect balance of knowledge and innovation.
These two traits can be found in every bottle of Lawson’s Dry Hills wine – wonderful, top quality fruit from our carefully nurtured vineyards transformed into imminently drinkable wines using modern winemaking techniques.
The original company vineyard was planted in 1982 by Ross and Barbara Lawson, who launched the Lawson’s Dry Hills label some ten years later, in 1992. Today, the company’s wines include Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir and our famous Gewürztraminer, all made from fruit grown in the Wairau, Waihopai, Omaka and Awatere Valleys. These different regions and carefully selected vineyard sites provide varying characteristics derived from the different soils and microclimates, giving many options when it comes to blending to that much-anticipated Lawson’s style.
The dedicated bunch of people that make up our small team at Lawson’s Dry Hills are very ‘hands on’, living and breathing every part of the viticultural and winemaking process.
The resulting wines offer an authentic expression of the place and the grape variety they are made from together with a certain special something that we believe can only come from passion.
It would seem that the combination of elements that go into each of our wines is a winning formula. We have lost count of all our gold medals – the certificates cover the walls in our cellar door while the shelves are buckling with the weight of all our trophies – both local and overseas. But actually we’re not ones to boast so that’s enough of that. We’d rather roll our sleeves up and get stuck in to making the best wines possible, after all, that’s what we dream of, talk about and well, it’s actually what we do.