Martinborough is very accessible from Wellington, taking about 1hr 15 mins to drive there. We arrived Friday evening and after an early night got up to Steve's pancakes and then set off on our walk. We were not exactly sure how long it would take to walk between the vineyards as we had only ever driven around Martinborough but there are enough small vineyards to join together a route from where we were staying in a loop. It actually took only 10 to 15 mins to walk between each. This meant we got to the first one just after 11am and had a choice of eating at either the Tirohana or Vynfields. Tirohana did such a great wine tasting in their back room that we decided to try Vynfields where we had some platters. We will try Tirohana next time. There were several other vineyards that we could have called into, but we had done Alana, TK and Ata Rangi on other occasions so we left those this time. All the vineyards would either deliver after work to your local accommodation or you could pick bottles up at a later date.
It was mid afternoon by the time we finished Cambridge Road, so the ladies went into town to do a thing called 'shopping' and the boys went back to the house to do a thing called 'sitting'.
On the Sunday we had booked onto the Murdock James Estate tour. This runs twice over the weekend and gives you a tour of their estate, walking through their vines with some good explanation of different methods and then through their factory area and cellars. It was very interesting and well worth doing after a heavy previous days sampling.
Here is a map what I have drawn you !
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| Steve's Walkiing Wine Trail Map |
