May 2010

This means "Tasting Room" in New Zealand. Photo by David Lansing.

The other day I asked winemaker Kathy Lynskey if she and her significant other, Kent Castro, who is also her business partner, ever had trouble separating business from the relationship and she said, No, they worked pretty well together.

Actually, that’s not what she said at all. What she really said was, “I suppose if we were going to have a major blue, we’d have had it by now.”

A major blue, in the language of Kiwis, is a fight. So I’ve translated her comment into English—they work well together. But the original language is more interesting, no?

Here are some other peculiarities about the language that I’ve noticed:

They don’t call winery tasting rooms “tasting rooms” in this part of New Zealand. They call them “cellar doors.” So that’s what you have to keep an eye out for when you’re driving past.

If you want milk or cream with your coffee, you ask for a “flat white.”

They don’t go to college over here; they go to “uni.”

They call country music “chicken kickin’ music” and they like to say “gobsmacked” a lot.

I rather like that word. In fact, when I heard the uni fella describe the major blue at the chicken kickin’ bar last night, I was just totally gobsmacked.

Really.

Kent Castro in the tasting room at Kathy Lynskey Wines. Photo by David Lansing.

Asking a winemaker like Kathy Lynskey about her favorite wines is a bit like asking a grandmother if she’s got any pictures of her grandkids; you’d better have lots of time on your hands. After I’d sampled her Gewürztraminer, made in a dry style, as I like it, with lovely notes of Turkish delight and lychee, she called in to the tasting room and asked Kent to bring us out more wine.

“What would you like?” he yelled back.

“Might as well bring it all out,” she said. Kathy is definitely my type of gal.

Next we tasted her Pinot Gris which had a creamy, sort of oily-mouth feel to it that made my mouth water. It had lovely aromas of ripe apple and pears.

Then I tried her signature wine, a select Sauvignon Blanc which had intense, vivid aromas of passionfruit, which surprised me since I tend to think of New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs as tending to be herbal with asparagus aromas.

Kathy told me that Marlboroough has very stony soil that, coupled with the relatively cool temperatures, were perfect for growing aromatic wines.

“I think Marlborough produces the most fantastic aromatic white wines in the world,” she said, swirling the Sauvignon Blanc in her glass and then sticking her nose in it.

“You can go up and down the valley and everywhere you go you’ll find fabulous Gewürztraminer and Riesling and Pinot Gris. I’m tempted to do a Viognier myself.”

So what exactly are aromatic whites? According to wine author Ed McCarthy, they include “all wines in which aromas and flavors are the dominant characteristics; the wines’ aromas could be floral, herbal, fresh fruits, dried fruits, pepper, spice, or minerals—either singular or, more commonly, combined.”

And, he adds, they go particularly well with food—especially in summer.

“I know that lots of fine, light-bodied red wines are out there, but the foods I eat in the summer—salads, fish, seafood, and vegetables—just lend themselves to pairing with aromatic whites.”

Sounds good. But I needed a little convincing. So Kathy asked Kent if he couldn’t perhaps grill up some shrimp she had in the fridge for our lunch. Which he did. While I sampled one aromatic wine after another. Thank god David is doing the driving this afternoon.

The Vintners Retreat in the Marlborough wine country. Photo by David Lansing.

I got into Auckland, New Zealand about 11 yesterday, then caught a little puddle jumper and flew to Blenheim on the Northern tip of South Island. Blenheim is the gateway to Marlborough, the largest and most famous wine region in New Zealand. There are well over a hundred wineries aroud here and I plan on visiting every single one.

Okay, I’m joking. Certainly I won’t get to more than 40 or 50.

By the time I got to Vintners Retreat, an interesting resort out in the middle of a vineyard, I had just enough time to shower, change, and make my way through the grape vines to the resort’s restaurant, Retreat, for dinner.

The restaurant is only open for guests at the resort, which seems a little odd to me, and, since it was Sunday, there were only a few other diners. Being in the heart of the Marlborough wine country, the chef likes to use local ingredients that compliment the area wines, and I’m all in favor of that. So I just went with her “Taste of Marlborough” menu which included a salad of baby arugula (which they call rocket down here) with asparagus and, of course, roasted rack of New Zealand lamb.

I love lamb. In fact, I’m thinking maybe I’ll have lamb every night for dinner for as long as I’m here. Or until I get sick of it. Which I can’t imagine happening. Then again, we’re right up against Cloudy Bay and the Marlborough Sounds, known for their lovely rock oysters and greenshell mussels. And you know how I love shellfish. So we’ll see. But for last night, it was a perfectly cooked medium rare lamb with a fragrant, mouth-filling Clayridge Excalibur Pinot Noir. An excellent start to the trip.