Blenheim. The home of New Zealand wine…
Another optional stop on the Kiwi bus is Blenheim, a small town in the Region of Marlborough (north of the south island).
Now you wine lovers may already be aware (i think the title of the posts gave it away anyway) but Marlborough is home to 20+ vineyards exporting wine all across the world.
Marlborough is one of the premium wine regions in the world, and well… it would be rude to not say hello.
Blenheim is also home to my uncle and his family, so it was a wine and family stop off.
Before we even dropped our bags off, we headed to 2 wineries for a bit of tasting…
3/4 of the wineries we went to were free to sample. And the other was $2 – so not bad at all.
First one we hopped into was Gibson Bridge, famous for their Pinot Gris…
We then headed straight to another winery – Wither Hills (you can find these bottles in the UK).
Little bit of trivia for y’all… This is actually where Prince Will and Kate visited when they came over to New Zealand earlier this year.
I’m not really a wine drinker, so this was a completely new world to me.
After tasting all the wines I came to the conclusion Sauvignon is my kinda wine.
We actually got to try one of the ‘experimental’ wines from Wither Hills which was lighter, and pretty sweet – more of a dessert wine.
We were all sold on it and so bought a bottle to enjoy over dinner.
We had 1 full day in Blenheim with which we decided to go for a walk. A short drive from Blenheim is a port / town called Picton. It is the ferry port connecting the south island with the north island.
Is is also the gateway to the Marlborough Sounds.
We walked along the entrance to the sounds to a little bay called ‘Bob’s Bay’…
… where we all had a little picnic together 🙂
Isn’t my little cousin the cutest button you’ve ever seen…
It was a beautiful walk and if we were there for another day we would have explored more as you can hike for up to a day on different routes.
Our time was limited and we had the little button with us, but the views were stunning and the weather was perfect.
Once we got home we all snuggled around the dinner table and had a yummy family dinner with that wine I was telling you about before…
…Post dinner we did a walk local to their house where we watched the sunset over the rolling hills 🙂
Before we knew it it was time to hop back on the Kiwi Bus and head to our next destination.
I had such a lovely time seeing family and it was so nice to finally come to their corner of the world.
Such a beautiful and peaceful place to live.
♡
11am and we hopped back on the bus at Blenheim – completely unaware that the bus had actually planned a group stop at… another winery.
The great thing is that there are so many wineries, and so we saw a new one 🙂
We also had a nosey in the Fudge Factory where they were handing out samples…
My crazy travel buddies…
not sure if i blame the wine or the sugar…
♡
Thank you for reading, lots of love all the way from New Zealand…
Mollie xxxx
