Jesse Mulligan joins an annual celebration of good food and wine in beautiful surroundings.
The Dog Point picnic is an annual event that began informally 10 years ago when Al Brown threw together some local produce for a dozen or so staff members and their families. He returned the following year but by then word had started to get around, and within a few summers the number of picnickers had swelled to 200.
Brown is there in name only these days through his former restaurant Logan Brown, which still prepares and cooks all the food for a well-dressed crowd who lunch in the dappled shade of an olive grove on one of Marlborough's most respected wineries.
Ivan Sutherland and winemaker James Healy made their name during the early days of Cloudy Bay and, when that brand was sold to the French, struck out on a new venture, doing things their own way on a large patch of premium winegrowing land at the confluence of Brancott and Omaka Valleys.
A few years ago Ivan decided to switch to organic growing methods — a mammoth conversion into what, at 250ha, is now one of New Zealand's largest organic vineyards. It's the sort of decision you can make when personal satisfaction is as important as commercial imperatives and that ethos is visible throughout the business where, to be honest, the extended family could probably do without putting on a long lunch for 200 each February, but continue to do it because the social and hospitable aspects of the industry are just as important to them as the economic.
