It’s renowned for wine, but this NZ region has another highlight

Oscar the dog is bursting with excitement as our boat pulls up to the dock where he’s standing. There aren’t many opportunities for “good boys” like Oscar to get pats from strangers at Tawa Cove, a remote cove in the Marlborough Sounds, on the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island. It’s a place with no roads and only a sprinkling of residents, where forested hills plunge into an ocean so turquoise it could feature on a postcard.

Postmen and dogs aren’t traditionally a good mix, but today’s far from your usual mail run. In fact, I’m the postie who’s leaning off the side of the boat and delivering a red New Zealand Post pouch to Oscar’s owner (and a postman’s pat to the brown cocker spaniel).

I didn’t expect to get a job as a postie on my holiday to New Zealand. But this part of the country often confounds expectations, as I soon discover.

We’re on the Mail Boat Cruise in Queen Charlotte Sound, part of the larger Marlborough Sounds, delivering post and supplies to residents who live in this remote region. The Sounds are a network of ancient valleys that flooded when sea levels rose, and it’s become an outdoor playground for nature lovers. Think 1500 kilometres of coastline, of secluded bays and beaches that can only be reached by boat.

Once a week, the residents pop down to their dock to collect mail, food and supplies, and say kia ora to Dylan, the skipper on the Beachcomber Cruises Mail Boat Run who has been an official postie here for 20 years. The postal service used to operate its own aquatic mail run, but it wasn’t a particularly cost-effective method, so they teamed up with Beachcomber to allow tourists on board to check out this special part of the world. As our boat heads north, about 20 dolphins play in the boat’s wake. Orcas are even known to enter the Sounds once or twice a year to feast on stingray.

“Over Christmas we deliver lots of grandchildren, you’ve got to make sure they get off at the right stop,” Dylan jokes. He and his team once had to deliver a lounge suite, the large piece of furniture perched precariously on the boat’s roof.

This wasn’t what I was expecting when I boarded my flight to Marlborough. If that name makes you start hankering for a glass of sauvignon blanc, you’re not alone. Marlborough shot to global fame in the mid-1980s when its fruity, punchy variety of sauvignon blanc proved wildly popular at bottleshops around the world.

Today, the region is still a winegrowing behemoth, and sauvignon blanc accounts for an estimated 85 per cent of New Zealand wine exports, according to the national organisation for the country’s grape and wine sector, New Zealand Wine.

But speak to the locals here, and it’s clear they think they’ve been typecast. There’s so much more to the region than just sauvignon blanc – both in wine varieties, and beyond the wineries themselves.

“Chardonnay is one of Marlborough’s biggest secrets,” says Richard Ellis, a winemaker and co-founder of The Marlborist who is leading us on a bike tour through the valley floor with Explore Marlborough Wine Tours. The characteristics that make this such a thriving wine growing region also make it well-suited to cycling: temperate days, an abundance of sunshine, and mountain ranges that shelter it from the worst of the rain and the wind.

Soon we’re pedalling past vineyards and down beside the fast-flowing Wairau River, flowing from the Spencer Mountains into Cloudy Bay. Richard explains we’re cycling along a complex fault line, where the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates meet. It has resulted in a crossroad of unique soil types, creating different growing conditions for wine styles to flourish.

We cycle to the Dudson Scott Gallery, where artist Joanna Dudson Scott invites us into her studio. The wine tasting is set up next to her paints, and Joanna joins us for a tipple as she talks us through her upcoming exhibition. At our next stop, Forrest Wines, we sit outside and sample everything from the chardonnay to the rosé and, look, things are starting to get just a bit merry. We’ll have to start using the spittoon soon if we’re going to remain upright by day’s end.

As we proceed down the driveway of the organic winery Clos Henri, the vines part to reveal an old chapel nestled among the grapes. The building was deconsecrated, picked up and moved to the vineyard in 2003 by the Bourgeois family, well established winegrowers in France’s Sancerre region, who decided to try their hand on the opposite side of the world and set up their winery here in 2000. The chapel is now the winery’s tasting room, and the pinot noir goes down very well, thank you, as we sit in the pew inside the chapel and sip.

Smack bang in the middle of this famous wine-growing region are a couple of shipping containers where Ben Leggett, the co-owner of Elemental Distillers and a tutor at the New Zealand School of Wine and Spirits, has a trophy to prove there’s more to this region than just wine. In 2023, his concoction – Roots Marlborough Dry Gin – won the award for the world’s best London dry gin. That’s right, his drop was judged better than anything London could produce that year. Ben guides us through his distillery, all copper pipes and knobs, and explains the process that results in the little cup of delight we’re sipping as we go. Afterwards, there’s space to sit on the lawn in the sun and graze on a cheese board as the light fades over the mountains. It’s just as well the bike hire place is a couple of doors down, for those too wobbly to pedal further.

That night, back at St Leonards Vineyard Cottages where I’m staying, I stand next to the vines and stare up at the vast sky. What at first looks like cloud is, in fact, a glowing blanket of stars – the Milky Way. I can’t remember stargazing like this since I was a kid. Then it’s straight into the outdoor bathtub, to the side of the cottage. There is no one out here, save for Lilly the sheep just over the fence there, and she really doesn’t care. Fill the bath to the brim and jump in – some bubbles in the bath, and in your hand too if you’re so inclined.

The next day it’s off to the seaside town of Picton, just 30 minutes’ drive north and one of the gateways to the Marlborough Sounds. From here we board a boat and explore the mostly deserted coastline, where every turn reveals a hideaway beach or bay.

Hikers and mountain bikers flock to this part of the Sounds to take on the Queen Charlotte Track, a 73.5-kilometre route from Ship Cove in the north to Anakiwa in the south. The hike can take anywhere from three to five days, and be done in various levels of comfort. Self-sufficient hikers can pitch their tents at basic campsites along the track, but for those wanting a bit more luxury – say, a glass of wine, a nice meal and a comfy bed at the end of each day – a bunch of accommodation options have popped up in the wilderness. These range from basic cabins to lodges like Portage Resort, which is 700 metres off the walking track and tucked into the mountain overlooking Portage Bay.

There’s no need for a television in this hotel room – the large rectangular window with sweeping views of the bay is far more entertaining, the sky changing colour as the clouds skip over the water.

That afternoon, a few tired hikers and mountain bikers who are tackling the Queen Charlotte Track descend on the resort, covered in mud following a downpour. It’s been a hard day, they say, and they’ve earned a hot shower. We share a beer on the hotel’s deck and watch the sun set, before a dinner of snapper and prawns caught straight from the bay.

The resort is accessible by water taxi for day-hikers like me who only want to tackle part of the track. Hiking around the water’s edge, it certainly feels like you’re a world away from the bustle of a busy life.

Dylan, our boat captain and the postman, reckons there’s nothing better than his little corner of the world. “People always ask me why I haven’t travelled much. I just haven’t found anything better than this,” he says.

We’ll raise a glass to that.

THE DETAILS

VISIT
A four-hour cruise on the Mail Boat Run with Beachcomber Cruises starts from $NZ127 ($110). It operates year round. See beachcombercruises.co.nz

FLY
Air New Zealand operates daily flights from Australia to Marlborough Airport via Auckland. See airnewzealand.com.au

STAY
There are four boutique cottages at St Leonards Vineyard Cottages. The park-like grounds are home to a flock of farm animals including sheep, deer and hens (which supply your breakfast eggs). It’s close to the Marlborough Wine Trail and is a two-minute drive from the airport. Cottages from $NZ414 ($359) a night. See stleonards.co.nz

At Portage Resort in the Marlborough Sounds, rooms start from just over $NZ200 ($174) a night in low season. It’s a 15-minute water taxi journey from Picton, or accessible from the Queen Charlotte Track. The resort also offers kayaking and other water activities. See portageresort.co.nz

MORE
See marlboroughnz.com

The writer travelled as a guest of Destination Marlborough.

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