Wine country!

After packing up at Nikau Cove in drizzly rain, we headed to Onamalutu campsite, which happens to be the closest DOC campsite to Blenheim and the Marlborough wine region.  The drive wasn't as long as we thought, so we stopped at a couple of wineries that afternoon:

• St Clair: nice range, nice wine.
• Moa brewery: Mel tasted a range of brews - very nice apparently!
• Allan Scott: we weren't particularly impressed.  Not having anything to entertain the kids didn't help!

The campground was empty and very very wet after raining all day.  During the night, our tent leaked a little bit through the floor - probably something to do with sitting in what had turned into a swamp!

The next day we did some more wineries (after coffee for us and some fudge for the kids!):

• Forrest: very nice riesling, bocce for the kids to play!
• Gibson Bridge: excellent range of pinot gris
• Fairhall Downs: very nice family-owned place.
• Bladen: saw some sunshine here!
• Hans Herzog: expensive and rather snobby-looking, so we didn't bother staying
• Staete Landt: interesting oaked Sauv Blanc.
• Framingham: we liked their classic riesling back in 2006, we still liked it now.  Also got to play croquet!

Dinner that night was at a Thai place in town... we weren't overly enthused being quite tired from a long day of driving around, but the dinner was fantastic!  We'd definitely recommend Chi Chi Restaurant on High Street!