A Wine Tourist’s Paradise

Telegraph wine writer Adrian Woodford spent six days in NZ on an intensive wine-tasting tour that encompassed Marlborough, Hawkes Bay and Gisborne. He pronounces NZ the “finest country in the world for a wine tourist” and agrees with a Marlborough wine worker’s likening of the local industry to the country’s 19th-century gold rush. “Sauvignon Blanc, for example, may have been born on the banks of the Loire, but it has reached new heights in this country,” he writes. Woodford’s tour takes in the full spectrum of NZ wine producers; from large-scale operations such as Marlborough’s Montana Brancott, to Gisborne’s organic Millton Estate.