Taste specialty wines during a trip to New Zealand’s Marlborough region. // © 2017 Debbie OlsenFeature image (above): Active clients can take a bike ride through the vineyards. // © 2017 Debbie Olsen Wine lovers, here are a few river cruises that might pique your interest. Wine Tours By Bikewww.winetoursbybike.co.nz There’s a reason the ancient Maori people referred to New Zealand as “the land of the long white cloud.” As I sat in the tasting room of Brancott Estate, I could understand why the name fit. Floor-to-ceiling windows provide excellent views, and I couldn’t help but notice a long line of white clouds floating just above vineyards that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. The sun-drenched tip of New Zealand’s South Island has become a mecca for food and wine lovers. The first modern winery was opened in Marlborough in 1977, and today, the region is home to more than 120 wineries and 90 percent of the country’s sauvignon blanc vines.

About 76 percent of New Zealand’s total wine production can be traced to this region, making it a tourism hot spot. Exploring wineries is the No. 1 tourism activity, but fine dining is also taking off. Since food and wine go hand in hand, most wineries have established excellent on-site restaurants.  best red wine from virginiaClients can taste nature’s bounty when top chefs create remarkable dishes from the freshest local ingredients — organic olive oil, honey, fruit, produce, local meat and seafood — and then pair them with fine wines. pictures of wine basketsAlmost every winery has a tasting room where clients can sample different varieties and vintages. best wines of new zealand 2015Some are simple spaces, and some are quite elaborate. why buy expensive wine glasses

At Brancott Estate, the tasting room sits on a hill overlooking the original Brancott vineyards. Clients can learn about the history of Marlborough wine, enjoy a tasting or have dinner in the winery’s outstanding restaurant. They can also go for a walk on an interpretive trail and learn about the endangered New Zealand falcon.best online wine store ukSome wineries also offer cycling tours — many of which include a wine tasting — where clients can explore the property and vineyards on two wheels. wine and food christmas giftsThere are also several companies, such as Wine Tours By Bike and Bike 2 Wine, that provide guided winery cycling tours that include transport of any purchases and transportation from Blenheim, the most populated town in Marlborough. The nearby Marlborough Sounds are best explored by water, and there is a range of cruises and activities that can be booked out of the nearby town of Picton.

Clients can rent a kayak, book a luxury yacht cruise or enjoy a fishing excursion. Those interested in food and wine would enjoy the Seafood Odyssea cruise. Marlborough Sounds is famous for its beauty and its abundant seafood, and this cruise lets clients experience both. They’ll spend a relaxing afternoon sailing through Queen Charlotte Sound and stopping to see a salmon farm. Along the way, they can sample salmon, clams and green mussels paired with local sauvignon blanc wine.Where to StayBlenheim is the biggest community in the Marlborough region, with an urban population of around 31,000. There are several hotels and bed-and-breakfasts in Blenheim, but Chateau Marlborough is the only five-star hotel in town. The hotel is a short walk from the town center and overlooks the gardens of Seymour Square. When to GoWith a warm climate and mild winters, Marlborough is great at any time of year, but most people visit between October and May. The annual Marlborough Wine & Food Festival, the longest-running wine festival in the country, takes place in mid-February each year at Brancott Estate.

Festival-goers get the chance to sample world-class wines and great food, enjoy cooking demonstrations by celebrity chefs and view a Fashion in the Vines competition. Last Tuesday, while visiting my mom's house, I noticed a copy of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's on the end table. I like the movie, which is great ammunition when I'm calculating ways to convince people that I'm sensitive, but I never got around to reading the novelette. I sat on the couch and picked it up. About five pages in, a character mixes a drink called a White Angel, half gin and half vodka, no vermouth. (Basically, a naked martini for indecisive people.) I wanted to try it, so I put the book down and left for Zimm's Martini & Wine Bar (4321 Montrose, 713-521-2002). I hadn't been there before, but the name made it sound like a suitable place to order that kind of drink. Inside, the bar is trendy and sleek. On weekends it's probably crawling with attractive people who drive late-model used BMWs. Like the place in Breakfast, there are mirrors that "reflect the weather from the streets," though Capote's creation didn't feature house music or a blinking frozen drink machine.

The bartender had never heard of a White Angel; I gave him the recipe. "That's a man's drink," he joked as he served it. (If only he'd known the source material.) It tasted smoother than I expected. Worth a shot, though it doesn't stand up to a well-made martini.2 ounces Bombay Sapphire gin2 ounces Ketel One vodkaShake over ice for about ten seconds. Strain into a cocktail glass. Have you ever known a place so well that you can see it, sense it in your mind—even though you’ve never been there? Liguria is one of those places for me. I can smell the scrubby wild herbs sprung from rocks, the lemon trees, the sea air. I can taste the pesto. Much of this is thanks to the power of suggestion—a.k.a. hoards of travel magazines—but the rest is a straight-up translation of a place through wine. The vermentino grape is grown in several regions around and in the Mediterranean Sea—Tuscany, Sardinia, Corsica—and elsewhere, in California and Australia, but for me, it’s the Ligurian examples, with their crunchy sage, rosemary and thyme essence and salinity, that are most compelling.

Liguria’s seat at the corner of where the Alps meet the Apennines means that the grapes, in their steep, craggy vineyards, are washed over by that crisp breeze, while also warmed by the air that rises off the Mediterranean. But vermentino’s not the only grape that’s benefitting from this climate. Here, it shares space with pigato, which makes wines that are equally, if not more, aromatic, and broader, with less high-toned acidity and a trademark bitter edge. Though they are indeed distinguishable in character, the catch is that they’re essentially fraternal twins. I learned this from my friend Joe Campanale, the sommelier and owner of NYC’s Alta Linea, who’s always up for a good dog metaphor. “You know how some golden retrievers have almost white fur—and others have fur that’s sort of red?” he says. “That’s how it is with vermentino and pigato; they’re the same grape, except pigato has brown spots, freckles.” Is it strange that I, a freckled human being, immediately took an interest in them as they might apply to grapes?

To say that I am defined by my freckles might be a bit of a stretch, but as a pale-skinned redhead who becomes covered in them every summer, they’re an unavoidable detail of my caricature. The word “pigato” comes from “pighe,” the Ligurian dialect word for freckles.) Could it be true that this slight difference in complexion is actually changing the wine’s character? And does pigato actually taste different from vermentino or are we all just being conned by our power of suggestion? The language surrounding the shared DNA of these grapes is, it turns out, a little murky. Some sources claimed that pigato and vermentino (and Piemonte’s favorita, too, randomly) were so-called biotypes; others used the word clones. Not being a scientist by any stretch, I reached out to Dr. Dario Cantù, a plant biologist and associate professor in the viticulture department at UC Davis. “I wouldn’t use the word biotype; rather ‘clones’ or ‘clonal variants’ of the same variety,” he says. 

“Genetic evidence established that pigato and vermentino are the same variety. They are clones derived from non-sexual propagation (clonal propagation) of the same plant and along the way mutations happened resulting in the differences you mentioned.” Clonal variation often means that certain grapes have been shown to grow more successfully in certain areas, so I reached out to few producers to see if this was indeed the case. I wanted to know what it was about vermentino and pigato—beyond a couple of freckles—that made the wines so noticeably distinct. In true Italian fashion, I quickly realized that finding a consensus was nearly impossible. Pierluigi Lugano makes one of my favorite vermentinos, Vignaerta, under his Bisson label. According to Lugano, vermentino is more of a go-with-the-flow grape: Planted in different vineyards, it will show different personalities along with changing levels of acidity and structure. This is why he bottles wines from his vermentino vineyards separately.

This, he insists, is not the case with pigato. “Its character is more stubborn,” says Lugano. “Its acidity doesn’t vary and, when fully ripe, [pigato tends to be] slightly more aromatic.” While Lugano has hedged on the ability of vermentino to be a more terroir-expressive grape, Riccardo Bruna and his daughter Francesca are staunchly on pigato’s team—as mandated by the history and tradition of the rich, hilly soils of the Arroscia valley, an area that considers itself to be the grape’s native home. “Out of our area, [pigato] loses its typical characteristics,” says Francesca, pointing to flavors like aromatic herbs, yellow peach and citrus peel. And while in other areas vermentino and pigato seem to be planted intermittently, vermentino has never been planted in this region. Here, pigato shares the valley with red grapes like rossese, granaccia (grenache) and mourvedre, undoubtedly thanks to warmer temperatures and lower altitude. This climate is evident in Bruna’s concentrated takes on pigato.

Meanwhile, along Liguria’s Riviere Ligure di Ponente (the part of the Italian Riviera that’s west of Genova and closest to the Alps), Paolo Ruffino of Punta Crena has experimented growing both pigato and vermentino in a cooler, higher elevation climate. “Pigato has more structure and can age 10 to 15 years,” he says. “Vermentino is meant to be drunk younger.” I’d heard precisely the opposite. Clearly it was time to take this one to the streets. To find out exactly what differentiated these grapes—and to test whether we could actually tell them apart—we tasted a selection of more than a dozen wines blind. For the tasting, the PUNCH editorial team was joined by a few choice Italo-centric wine directors: Jeff Kellogg of Maialino, Grant Reynolds of Charlie Bird and Pasquale Jones and Matt Orawski of Del Posto. The grapes were far more distinct from one another than any of us had anticipated. The vermentinos tended to be higher in acid, salty and herb-scented, while the pigatos were almost always more aromatic (with notes of spice and mustard seed) and richer in texture.

While the group tended to lean toward vermentino, there were several pigatos that, when they channeled the linear, higher-acid notes of vermentino, stole our hearts. Herewith, our top five wines of the tasting: 2014 Punta Crena Vigneto Isasco Vermentino | All of Punta Crena’s high-elevation vineyards are planted less than a mile from the water, which means the vines get all of that brisk sea influence that vermentino, in particular, thrives on. The Ruffino family, now run by four siblings, has been growing grapes here for more than 500 years and are one of few producers devoted to maintaining old school Ligurian varieties, like mataòssu and lumassina, in addition to vermentino and pigato. Their vermentino is vibrant, savory and direct, so much so that it reminded some of us of Austrian riesling, in a loveably flinty, high-acid way. Importer: Kermit Lynch [Buy] 2014 Punta Crena Vigneto Ca’ da Rena Pigato | From a nearly 40-year-old vineyard, this wine was unabashedly pigato, as evidenced by its honeyed, almost waxy side.

As with the vermentino, it spends about four months on its lees, which gives it a rich texture that’s matched by higher acidity and more spice than we found in the other pigatos. Importer: Kermit Lynch [Buy] 2014 Bisson Vignaerta Vermentino | Consistently our go-to when it comes to vermentino, this wine is has all the hallmarks of a classic: It’s fragrant and distinctly herbaceous with exceptional acidity and verve. Bisson’s owner, Pierluigi Lugano, had his start in wine sales—and still owns a wine shop—but has been growing grapes and making wine since the late ‘70s in the Golfo del Tigullio, near Cinque Terre. Like Punta Crena’s Ruffino family, Lugano also works with rare local varieties, including bianchetta, alongside with vermentino and pigato. Importer: Rosenthal Wine Merchant [Buy] 2015 Bruna Majé Pigato | Located a bit inland, in the Arroscia valley, father-daughter team Riccardo and Francesca Bruna farm their pigato organically. The Majé is sourced from younger vines and shows higher-toned aromas than the rest of the pigatos in the pack, its citrus notes coupled with the texture and concentration that Bruna is known for.