Anniversary Trip to Blenheim

To celebrate our first wedding anniversary, Rob and I headed to Blenheim, which is a small town on the South Island right in the middle of the Marlborough wine region. This may sound familiar to those of you who are big Savignon Blanc fans, as it's the source for some of the best Sav Blanc in the world - including Kim Crawford, Cloudy Bay and Oyster Bay. 

Saturday was our actual anniversary, and to be honest, it was kind of a crappy day. We flew straight from Auckland to Blenheim on Saturday morning, and our plane (to the left) was so tiny it didn't even have a bathroom. I am not a great flyer in the best circumstances, and when I saw our plane I nearly turned around to head back home. As we were going to land, the captain made an announcement - the weather in Blenheim had taken a turn for the worse, and no other planes had been able to land because of it, but we were going to "give it a go." Yikes! After a lot of bumps and dips, our plane landed intact. The same cannot be said of my nerves.

The place we stayed was beautiful - it's a sheep farm surrounded by vineyards, with some of the old buildings turned into cottages (we stayed in the old stables). We had such a lovely time at Spannocchia just after our wedding that I thought it would be a nice way to celebrate our anniversary. Unfortunately, Saturday just was not our day, and while the cottage was lovely, the experience was.... slightly traumatic.

As the owner was showing us around our cottage, she pointed to a sheep just outside the back door and told us it was due to give birth any day. I love sheep because I love knitting with wool, so I was pretty enthused by this prospect. We headed off to lunch at Rock Ferry (which was really good), and as we were pulling back up to the house, the sheep was giving birth! I ran through the cottage and into the back yard to watch it all happen. I've never seen anything being born in real life before (except maybe an egg hatching), and was impressed at the speed with which it all happened. One moment the sheep was baa-ing and braying, and the next minute an entire lamb just fell out of it - and without any human assistance!  We watched the lamb kick around a bit, but I was sick with some kind of cold/plague/death (it was really not my day), and was wiped out by all the excitement, and needed a nap. So I laid down, looking forward to the prospect of seeing a new baby lamb stumbling around when I woke.

That did not happen. I woke up, but the baby lamb did not. Ever.  It died shortly after being born. And the owners left it there overnight, outside our cottage. 

From top left: our Stables cottage; Rob befriending a sheep; a sheep about to give birth (nothing is dead in this picture - yet); the deer in the next lemon grove over - they raise them for meat; the view from our cottage back yard

Saturday night we went to dinner at the Herzog Estate Bistro, had an absolutely perfect beef tenderloin, and declared that Sunday would be a re-do on our anniversary. After all - it was still the 21st in Italy.

Sunday I surprised Rob with tickets (paper anniversary) to a wine tour with Bubbly Grape. It ended up being even better than expected. We went to seven different wineries - Lawson's Dry Hills, Drylands (who makes Kim Crawford), Cloudy Bay, Forrest, Giesen, Hunter's and Wither Hills - plus a chocolate factory. We tasted dozens of wines (each place had 3-7 available), and I discovered that I love oaked Savignon Blancs (including Te Koko from Cloudy Bay, which you should be able to get in the States). It was a great day, and much better than our original plan to bike from winery to winery - especially since I was sick and it was raining!  Another bonus - the dead lamb had been removed from our yard by the time we got home! We had our favorite meal of meats and cheese and bread and olive oil and toasted to our first year of marriage - and what a year it's been!

From top left: Selection at Lawson's; Lawson's award winning Sav Blanc; Kim Crawford; our tour van

Cloudy Bay Winery - I want to live here and spend all day sitting in the tree swings and drinking Te Koko and Pelorus, their bubbly.

From top: Forrest (run by two doctors); lunch at Giesen (complete with rooster); the entire group at Wither Hills

Monday we woke up to a beautiful day - possibly the best weather we've had since arriving in New Zealand. We drove over to Picton to check out the Marlborough Sounds. Once there, we got a map from the tourist center and headed off on a short hike. It was only about 2 hours, but the views were breathtaking. We took a short drive along the coast on our way back to Blenheim - the roads were so windy and so narrow that it took us an hour to go 50 km. 

We had a late lunch in Blenheim and headed to the tiny, one-room airport to fly back home to Auckland. We don't have any plans to go out of town for the next month or so, but look forward to having many adventures in the area!