Winding down the Marlborough way

8.30am Somewhere Above Blenheim

I am not a nervous passenger. If you don't drive, and I don't, you learn two things - how to read a map and how to remain calm in all situations, even when an Italian traffic cop is involved. We are both slightly apprehensive. Possibly because we are looking through the front window. Do they call it the windscreen on a plane? There is a town right in front of us and the pilot seems to be attempting to prove that third form maths thing about the shortest distance between two points.

9.30am The Farmers' Market

Chris Fortune is a gorgeous man, grounded in his profession, family, domaine . All right, it's not the Domain, it's the A&P Showgrounds where he is the passionate host of the Farmers' Market on Sunday mornings through six months of the year. Run by a trust with simple rules: you grow it, you cook or harvest it, you can sell it. You can't buy it in and on-sell it. Fruit and flowers and vegetables and cheeses and preserves, it is the model for a national collective of similar ventures that has taken root in Hawkes Bay and other areas with agricultural tendencies. Julie Le Clerc and I spend a couple of hours walking and talking to people who grow garlic, brew sauces, roast coffee, milk goats, raise baby veges. "I know I've seen Chris somewhere before," says Julie.

12.30pm Twelve Trees Vineyard Restaurant

"We'll start with my home brew," says Josh Scott, hoisting assorted bottles on to the table under the grape-laden pergola of the family business. The Scotts are a dynasty: dad Allan was probably the first to see the province's potential for wine rather than sheep; Josh rucked his winemaking skills while playing pro rugby in France; sister Victoria runs the restaurant; little sister Sarah is the viticulturalist. Julie is unsure: "I'm not really a beer fan." But Josh's Moa brew is made along the same lines as his champagnes and wins us over in a sip. It's available at Glengarry: next weekend I get a six-pack and share it with my brother-in-law.

2pm Vineyard Walking Tour

Juliet Jordan looks fit. Damn it, she is fit. She and her husband, Steve Gibbons, are Wilderness Guides and they organise hiking and kayaking tours around the Sounds. She probably knows what the other 14 gears on my bike are for. Because Juliet used to run the cellar door shop at Seresin Vineyard, she had the cunning idea of promoting walking tours through some of the region's most picturesque properties. Of which one is surely Seresin, with its wetlands, artworks, organic principles, birdlife - a darned fine way to spend a day or two in Marlborough, see the countryside and work up a thirst. And there is a minibus to pick you ... to stash the samples while you walk to the next vineyard.

7pm Dinner At Herzog

Turn to page 17.

Midnight

Home to the Vintner's Retreat, a superbly set-up community of villas in the former Gillan estate.

6am

Julie is waiting in the car. Okay, she's the morning person: I am late. We drive through country that makes you ridiculously proud to have been born in Westmere or Kilbirnie and learn there are two marinas in Picton. The one that we are supposed to be at is 3km away. Thank you to the nice local who pointed this out after I had paid the extortionate sum of $4 for a day's parking at the first. Stewart Hawthorn, who heads the New Zealand King Salmon operation in Marlborough, is not fazed when we arrive late by Auckland standards. No one here seems fazed by anything. He is a delightful host. "Welcome to my office," he says as we blat up the Sounds in his speedboat, "it's probably the best office in the world," waving his arms to take in the water, boats, hills, trees, coves, seals.

11.30am

Chris Fortune promised he'd cook lunch on a boat in that other marina. Kicking with the lifestyle, Stewart came along too. Boat? Superyacht, the only one flying the NZ ensign out of this port, and our affable host is Peter Stewart, husband of Pieter Stewart, doyenne of NZ Fashion Week. "I know where I've seen you," Julie remembers as Chris slides breads, dips, salmon and matched whites on the quarterdeck or mainsail or one of those nautical places, "You won Hell's Kitchen." "Sprung," he admits. "I had the choice of working in the stress and drama of somewhere in Auckland or taking a 30 per cent pay cut and enjoying life." And watching the vines grow and the vegetables ripen. What would you do?

2.30pm

Get on flying pencil back to Auckland. Think, yeah, Chris and Stewart have got it right.