Last weekend in a bid to get some serious catch up time with friends, we decided to do something extra special- an all inclusive Winery tour! As it was two of our beautiful friends birthdays to celebrate, it was a great excuse to treat ourselves to a day of deliciousness and fun!
We booked our tour through Tour Finda which included a lovely driver for the afternoon, our own private mini bus, pick up and drop off where we needed and all wine tastings included for around 6 hours!
We visited Pegasus Bay, Waipara Springs, Waipara Hills and Torleese. Each winery had a wine I absolutely loved, and we all ended up going home with bottles collectively from all of the Wineries... They were all too delectable to pass taking one of the wines home!
As we were all relative newbies to wine tasting (apart from those $6 bottles of wine that got us through uni! haha) we all ended up falling in love with the lighter, sweeter, floral Rieslings. Interestingly most of us ended up changing our minds about Chardonnay! We had all previously experienced Chardonnay as cheap, tacky pungent wine- but we were so pleasantly surprised that it actually could taste delicious, especially paired with the right food.
As a consumer, sustainable business practice is incredibly important to me (even through the haze of a few wines!). It was great to see that every winery we went to ran their wine making sustainably- So we felt extra inclined to indulge in our tastings!
The staff at each vineyard were incredibly knowledgable and gregarious, so we learnt a lot about how wine is grown, harvested, fermented and stored. it was a great introduction into the world of wine tasting and we joked through the day about expanding our wine tasting vocabularies!
With all of the tastings included, it was more than enough to see us merrily through the day. We were even lucky enough to drive home to a breathtaking sunset across the North Canterbury skyline. Our wine trail tour made for such a lovely day of fun and quality catch up time with each other- I totally recommend getting your girlfriends together and treating yourself to a Vineyard tour in your corner of the world!
