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Travels through Wellington Wine Country

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Wellington Wine Country

Larry McKenna speaking from the edge of his Escarpment

Our tour through New Zealand wine countries finished with two days in Martinborough and its neighbor regions, all together known as Wairarapa, and now together reclassed as Wellington Wine Country. Wellington Wine Country sits about an hour and a half drive from the city itself. It’s one of the coldest growing regions in New Zealand with one of the longest growing seasons as well. As a result, it’s brilliant for producing truly cool climate varieties like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay with genuine concentration and density native to the fruit itself. Some of the founding prestige wineries of the country that first brought attention to the nation for producing high quality Pinot Noir originate here. The landscape through the region is incredible. At the same time, the townships hold a sort of country or frontier sort of feel that speaks to their remoteness, even if in proximity to the nation’s capitol. It’s a charming combination.

Here’s a look in photos as shared to Instagram while we traveled.

Sketching sense impressions from tasting on the trip through New Zealand to eventually do illustrations of the wines. (I don’t expect these particular ones to make sense to anyone else they are just a way to get my thinking started. When I am tasting wine I get a lot of visual and tactile experience in relation to the flavors of a wine. At times the multisensory experience of tasting makes it hard for me to use words to describe wine in a way I think others will recognize. So I started sketching the wines instead. Sketching the shapes of how a wine feels to me like shown here gives me a way to record my memory of a wine while I search for descriptors to give it later. These particular sketches are me thinking through regional characteristics rather than single wines.) #nzwine @nzwinegrowers @nzwineusa

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There it is full, the New Zealand notebook Jan/Feb 2017. #nzwine @nzwinegrowers @nzwineusa

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