Martinborough wines, Old Friends and musings on work

A bit of time has passed since the last blog and we put that down on our work schedule. When we are here and short staffed and on for the weekend, work pretty much occupies our time. And for you Northern hemisphere folks, remember our days are quite short in Mid autumn, so no after work bike ride or hike. But to complain about my hours is silly, I see men and women at the fish processing plant work 70 hours a week and the people up at the Mine work tough 7 days on and 7 off schedules. We have it good, though our recent visit to see Duncan, a friend from our freshman dorm at Stanford, raised the work issue as well. And not just because David Beckham

I

is retiring at age 38 but because Duncan has now a nifty lifestyle farm in the Greytown Carterton area north of Wellington with his partner Jan

SO Duncan has now traded his academic hat for a pick and shovel and an infinite number for projects around the farm. And though I am tempted to post a picture of Meatloaf here as that is one of the cows name, the fat Meatloaf's drunken support embarrassed Romney and totally eliminated the 1.3% chance that Nate Silver predicted he had of winning the election, and I do not want to popularize him again to the 4 readers of the blog.
Actually I was thinking of Kurt Vonnegut and Cat's Cradle and the tenet of the fictional religion ( is there a non-fictional one/) Bokononism called Karass.  A karass is a group of people who lack the common socially acknowledged ties like Cheeseheads, Rotarians, meadows club members, Boy Scouts, Boulderites, etc but actually seem to have an undefinable close tie. That's how it felt visit Duncan and Jan, though we have  only visited Duncan now three times in thirty 34 years or so, it was immediately familiar and warm. And that was not just the Wine talking

Though the Pinot Noir at Ata Rangi was excellent. I hope we can get together more often in the next 30 years, though I do not know if retiring to a lifestyle farm is really retiring or not.
And speaking of close friends, our returning flight to Westport was cancelled due to a giant storm that shut down the Wellington airport and Mark and Linda Baxter came to the rescue with  their hospitality and provided us with an excellent dinner, bed to sleep in and great company. All the more reinforcing the Karass tenent.

Marlborough Wine Tasting Weekend

OK, so I have been reading the latest hit on my Kindle, Trout Fishing in America, Hoping beyond all hope that it will help with my pitiful fishing success in New Zealand. But Alas, Likely not to be but if the blog seems a bit 1965 then there you have it. So check out the beautiful label of the Sauvignon Blanc that put New Zealand on the wine map and then check this out: Our photo from our tasting yesterday. As you can see the clouds rolled in and my plan to tour the Marlborough wineries by bike was defeated but our day was outstanding none the less. First of all, we stopped at Nelson Lakes national Park on our way over and had a wonderful short walk through and area of beech trees oozing honeydew that attracted Bellbirds and Tuis and Silvereyes and Robins as if Captain Cook was still out to sea and had not yet wrecked havoc with is stowaway rats on the bird life of New Zealand. But not to be detoured too much by fantastic local fauna, we arrive shortly in the Marlborough Wine country, and as enormous as it seemed upon arrival, the first winery we hit was not only excellent but certainly had a deep connection with us, as you can see Seresin Winery had fabulous sustainable Pinots and sauv blancs but of course how could we not think of this: Of course Jerry preferred Cab to Pinot, not that I know for sure, I would guess Zinfandel. And to top it off the "Pour Girl" , Not to sound too Sideways or anything, at Spy Valley, our next stop, was a New Zealander who had spent several years in Boulder. She was delightful and you can guess how nice it is to run into people that have things in common with you when you are so far from home. . Like Liquormart in Boulder. A touchstone if there ever was one. Yesterday on our planned biking excursion, the rain started falling. As we have not seen any rain for over a month, despite living in "Wetport" we decided to drive to vineyards rather than ride. It was fabulous. We tasted at a few and then had a wonderful lunch at at Wairau River winery. Of course we hit Cloudy Bay Villa Maria was one of my favorites, though the single vineyard wines they had at the winery were way more complex than the ones I now buy at the New World Supermarket, though complexity is not really required after work when you are scoping out white faced herons on the estuary and just want a glass of nice white wine., We did have a fabulous dinner, as gourmet as we have ever had, at Hans Herzog Winery yesterday evening, http://www.herzog.co.nz/dining/pdf_files/herzog_menu.pdf , never having had Smoked eel or beef tongue, never the mind together on an appetizer, it was a culinary highlight of our trip as well as our food history, As you can see, the vines were heavy with the grapes and the harvest for the grapes to be used in the sparkling wines was to start today. As we drove home in heavy rain, we were wondering what that would do to the harvesting timetable. Our trip was great, we stopped again at Nelson Lakes National park on the way back for a two hour hike during which we were serenaded by all the New Zealand forest birds rueing the arrival of stoats and rats and wasps. Not to mention Sheep, cattle and People.