Best of the Summer Wine

The NZ wine industry is set to benefit from the country’s Rings-inspired tourist influx this year, with two major travel features in the  Chicago Tribune and  Boston Globe. The former relates an American journalist’s experience at the 2003 BMW Wine Marlborough Festival, where “the array of wineries and wine-related exhibitors evoked, somehow, the personality of NZ itself – adventurous but calm, clever but modest, a friend of nature, a strong advocate of peace and conservancy. Names of a few wineries hinted at love of land: Sacred Hill, Shingle Peak, Grove Mill, Sanctuary, Omaka Springs, Clifford Bay, Lawson’s Dry Hills, Montana.” The Globe article directs wine enthusiasts to the Marlborough event (14 Feb), as well as the Waiheke Wine Festival (Jan 31 – Feb 1) and Harvest Hawke’s Bay (Feb 6 – 8).