This month's festival pick...

New Zealand's
Marlborough Festival

Offers Good Wine and Summer Warmth 

Festival visitors will sample wines from 41 local wineries.

New Zealand is small in population and far from Europe and the Americas, but those facts have not kept it from coming on strong in recent years as one of the world’s premier wine producing regions. Very good, even great, Kiwi white wines, including chardonnays, chenin blancs, sauvignon blancs and semillon, have begun reaching the tables of discerning international wine lovers.  

Barrel races, along with jazz music and food from the region’s best restaurants and chefs, will compliment the wine tasting activities.

The country’s southern hemisphere seasons work to its advantage, too. When North Americans and Europeans are shivering through the winter months of December, January and February, New Zealanders are basking in a temperate summer. With long, sunny days abounding, what better season to celebrate food and wine?

The biggest Kiwi wine festival of all takes place in the sunny Marlborough region of South Island, New Zealand’s most productive vinicultural area, almost directly across Cook Strait from Wellington. There, on the Brancott Estate a few miles west of the region’s main city, Blenheim, the Marlborough Festival will enter its 17^th year on Feb. 10, drawing 41 wineries showing more than 200 wines among them.

The wineries will offer tutored tastings throughout the day, often paired with food prepared by the region’s leading restaurants. Besides imbibing and eating, visitors will also be able to enjoy jazz and salsa music, and engage in barrel races and other sports.

This is a good one-day event for learning about New Zealand‘s emerging wines and cuisine while poised at the transportation crossroads of South Island. I beautiful coastal route south from Blenheim leads to the garden city of Christchurch on South Island’s east side, while other routes wind their way west and south to New Zealand’s magnificent lost coast, a beautiful tangle of mountains, fjords and austral forests.  — Patrick Totty