We are in Blenheim. This morning the Gentleman Friend’s cousin Bloddeuwydd and her husband the Winemaker, picked us up from Picton and drove us the 20 minutes to their house. We had passed through Blenheim but it had all been warehouses then; now we went off the motorway (so to speak) into quite a pleasant town, with small low houses, parks and small commercial zones.
The house is an old one by local standards and has been lovingly maintained, complete with shining circular switches and an ancient locally manufactured wood burning stove and beautiful fireplaces in every room. Outside, in the garden, is an immense trampoline and many fruit trees as well as a kitchen garden and the GF doing cartwheels on the lawn. (And a wall, or at least a tight wooden fence, reasonably high and screening the house from the road, blessed day.
Bloddeuwydd and Winemaker are really lovely, immediately warm and welcoming. Their children, a young fellow who is building a computer, and a teenaged girl who plays football (winning the GF’s heart) and reads Frances Hardinge (winning mine), are also delightful. I see why they are near or at the top of the relational rankings in the GF’s mind.
The GF is now on the huge trampoline which he has sworn to master before we leave Blenheim.
After a light lunch we were taken to the vineyards where the pinot noir grapes are getting close to harvest and got a little lecture on grape cultivation for wine, as well as a taste of some of their finest. The Winemaker is in a mode of high excitement at this time of year as he has been monitoring the grapes, planning etc for the year and now the winemaking will begin. It all sounds a fine mixture of science and art. It’s not my thing, but I can certainly appreciate it.
A brief break while I took a turn on the trampoline. I remember how I longed for one when a child in Norway and saw it in other people’s gardens. This one is huge. It’s more tiring than I knew, and I found it hard to stay upright and to trust the surface when I fell, but I shall persevere and now I want a trampoline too.
I also enjoyed the post-trampolining feeling as well, as though I was suddenly on a planet with higher gravity.
The Marlborough region is in a glacial valley and one can almost see the tracks of the glacier going north. Strange that this not very large area produces as much wine as it does. I tried the pinot noir grapes off the vine and was surprised that they are relatively tasteless, but I suppose the desirable properties of a wine grape are very different from the table grapes I’ve always had. Also, I understand they ripen very suddenly and develop their sugars over the course of a day or two.