wine tasting by bicycle

we all went wine tasting again and i have come to the conclusion that if you pay a small fee for tasting ($5 new zealand) they will treat you much better, give you larger pours and be alot happier to answer questions. out of all the wineries we visited (by bicycle in the hot hot sun i might add) forrest vineyards charged for a tasting but you got to pick six wines and they threw in a seventh, most likely something new that they were trying to promote. but the pours were almost a quarter glass full, and very well done on a tray with numbered insets for the bottom of each glass and tasting notes to corospond to each. every other winery looked at us and seemed to assess that we were young and riding bikes and most likely weren't going to spend a great deal for money, and sort of paid minimal attention to us. though we did try some amazingly potent grape liquor similar to grappa which was like a kick in the head compounded by the heat. thank goodness the swimming hole was just down the road and wonderful. you could swim up the river a ways and then just drift back on the current. peaceful. plus we met ian, an aussie who is managing cloud bay vineyards and now we have another place to visit on monday. more winerys than could be got to in a week. i now see the benifit of a bus tour, it's easier to got to five or six places if you climb onto an air-condiditioned bus after getting sloshed, instead of trying to swing your leg over the seat of a bicycle while staggering slightly. but sooooo much fun. it's hardly work here really...
last night we made a crazy meal together, trying to use all the odd things in the 'crisper' and we ended up with shredded beetroot, zuccini and potato pancakes with mustard and hotsauce, quinoa and homemade coleslaw. accompanied by last years sauvignon blanc we picked up at a vineyard earlier and i carried home in my purse. on the bike. thank goodness it was only nine bucks cause there was a chance of me falling over, and i've never been that graceful a rider!
and then dinner was followed by blueberry pancakes which filled the little cottage with smoke but tasted divine with just a little bit of melty butter. we ate ourselves into a stupor.
and got up at quarter past seven to go to the market in neighboring blehnim where i sold plums and blueberries till we basically ran out at noon. i can now eyeball a kilo of plums and hand weigh a quarter kilo of blueberries with a fair amount of accuracy for which i am very proud.
i think we are going to make some sort of fritatta tonight with micro green salad (we're gonna attempt to make blueberry vinigrette) and lemon blueberry cheesecake bars. pretty much blueberries go in everything here, they are just so abundant and no one can find a good reason not to use masses of them. my cereal is really more berry than cereal in the morning...