The return and the departure

We were supposed to have dinner in Martinborough around 6pm. We were late. More accurately I suppose, we were suppose to have dinner in Martinborough the previous Thursday, so we were really late. Only that time we were late because of a car accident. Wine tasting is not quite as dramatic of an excuse.

And so I returned to Martinborough, approximately 7 months and 1 week after harvest had ended the previous spring/fall. The town looked, well, exactly as I remembered it. There was one significant development, the Pukemanu, the diviest dive bar around, was undergoing a renovation. It remained open for business however (indeed, I'm not sure any of the regular patrons had left their barstools). We met Huw and his girlfriend Amanda at the Hotel bar for dinner and drinks and to catch up on the latest goings on(sidenote: many of the pubs in NZ refer to themselves as "hotels", although many of them don't seem to have actual rooms to rent, save maybe a closet behind the bar for the sleepy drunk. Evidently the hotel industry is not extremely profitable in NZ. The drinking industry remains robust). Compared to the usual nights I had spent at the hotel, the evening was relatively low-key, most likely because Huw and Amanda both were still a bit hungover from the weekend's festivities.

After spending the night in Huw's new house, we tasted through a few of the old haunts of fellow interns (Palliser and Martinborough vineyards, as well as Schubert) before heading out to Escarpment to taste through the fruits of some very intense labor. After Hawks Bay, the air in Martinborough seemed very different than I remembered. The tasting rooms were a bit stuffier and the wines more expensive, and there was a distinct lack of bleary eyed unwashed harvest interns running around. Still, after the charm of Hawks Bay, Martinborough was a bit flat.

We went out to meet Huw at Escarpment, hoping along the way to run into some of the other Escarpment boys, but it seemed our timing couldn't have been worse. Larry (the winemaker) was running around doing last minute pre-Christmas errands, while Dave (the viticulturalist) was off attending some conference (I had a sneaking suspicion that he too was nursing a hangover in a dark corner somewhere, but I suppose we will never know). Nonetheless, the timing for tasting the wines was perfect, just after finishing their secondary fermentation but before being stabilized with sulfur (which makes the wine rather undrinkable until just before bottling). It was good to catch up with these old friends.

We left Martinborough that afternoon and made for Wellington, driving over the familiar and treacherous Pakuratahi pass through Upper Hutt. The kiwis are not big fans of building tunnels. Maybe its because they have such beautiful scenery. Maybe its because there is a distinct lack of high quality dynamite in NZ. Or maybe its because they have a lot of people that like building roads but there just aren't that many roads that need to be built. For whatever reason, they elect to build ridiculously dangerous roads over mountains that are just wide enough to fit you and an oncoming truck, if you hug the shoulder that is. Except there really isn't a shoulder. The road may be safe if you travel at the recommended speeds (although this is highly questionable), but the locals are more keen to test the physical limits of their machines on corners than obey any speed limit. The guard rails aren't much help either, and in some cases are even cemented into the ground. The one thing the road doesn't lack is crosses. Needless to say, it was a bit of a white knuckle crossing.

We pulled into Wellington with a few hours to kill before our ferry departed, so we headed down to Mac's brewery on the waterfront for a quick bite. The time passed quickly (funny thing about pubs), and as we got back into the car we noticed that our ferry ticket had a final boarding time about an hour before the departure time. Which meant our final boarding time was 15 minutes ago. And it was rush hour in Wellington. Well done.

Thankfully the final departure time was more of a suggestion than a requirement, and we made our ferry with about 10 minutes to spare. Nevermind that we were just about the last car aboard. One thing we had timed well that day was our arrival time in Picton, pulling into the gorgeous Queen Charlotte Sound just as the sun was going down. The ride was relatively smooth and quite beautiful, and as darkness descended our wheels hit the pavement of the south island. We were Renwick bound, ready to rest our bones on the same earth that yielded perhaps New Zealand's most famous wine: Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.