Wine Tasting by Bike and other oxymorons

Alex and I have discovered so many wonderful things while travelling around the world that we just love...scuba diving, cooking exotic foods, hiking for 3-4 hours...but we have really found a love of wine tasting. I think just learning about wines and how they are prepared...what a process...and which wines go with what food...it just makes us feel giddy. We have experienced wine tasting while in Australia on an all inclusive tour in a large air-conditioned van that took us from vineyard to vineyard and a chocolate factory and cheese shop...I'm literally drooling right now at this very moment.
In New Zealand, there are vineyards dotted all over the North and South Island and we had a tough time choosing where to dabble in a little of New Zealand's finest...but, as soon as we saw the pamphlet for bicycling the wineries, our decision was made for us. What a great day out...biking through vineyards, tasting wines and really getting a feel for the land...we were fools.
It all started innocently enough with a call to reserve the bikes for the day and lovely chat with the owner from Sussex who relocated to New Zealand about 5 years ago and bought this already established business, tweaked it a bit and basically watched it grow and flourish ever since. You get the bike all day he gives you a map of the vineyards in and around about a 10km radius of his bed and breakfast, he loads you up with free water and your bike comes with a wine carrier that can hold up to 4 bottles of wine...surely we would not need to use that apparatus, as we would not be purchasing much of anything due to our tight budget.
Off we zoomed, passing some Canadians on our way to the first vineyard for some tastings. Bless the little Canadian couple; they may have been young, but they were so out of shape and after that 2km jaunt to the first winery, they abandoned the day and returned to their car to drive to the remaining vineyards. We found the first tasting to be a great way to start off the day...the staff were friendly and one of the girls serving the wine was from Austin, Texas of all places...can you even believe it!
Soon enough, we were buzzed...well, I was buzzed as I have the tolerance of a small chicken, or some other small animal that would not respond well to the tiniest bit of alcohol...and we decided to just purchase 1 bottle from this winery, as you cannot get some of them in London...we made sure to ask. Peddling to the next vineyard was a bit more challenging than the first one, as it was about 5km down the road and we were a tiny bit loopy by this point...I mean they do give you about 7-8 wines to taste and then any others you ask for...
We made it to the second vineyard and this one offered a hike up a tower in the middle of all the grapes that offered awesome views of the entire vineyard and dozens of other vineyards as far as the eye could see...we tasted and thought, we should really just get one more bottle of wine that we cannot get in London and that would be it!
As I describe our day, I hope that you are beginning to see an ugly pattern arising in each paragraph...free wine, and lots of it, biking around in the heat, no food to eat in between the wine tastings and a loose wallet to go with our drunken state of mind. After about 4 more vineyard visits, we found ourselves in a conundrum...how are we going to fit all of the bottles in our wine carrier as we have more than 8...MORE than 8.
We brilliantly decided to get a box that holds 6 and Alex would carry it, while drunkenly riding her bike back to the bed and breakfast where we rented them, as our day was coming to an end. Of course, this was another 8km from our current location so there were many honks and beeps from cars passing us by, as we swerved to the end of our wine tasting tour via bike. What a brilliant day, we thought...

...and then we woke up the next day surrounding by a dozen bottles of wine and a nasty wine hangover. SHITTTTTTTT! I am sure I don't need to paint a picture of 2 girls crammed in the back of a Jucy van with purpley red wine stained mouths and lips and bottles of wine surrounding our bodies. What have we done...how are we going to get 12 bottles of wine back home to London?! They won't all fit in our backpacks and honestly, I cannot carry much more in that monstrosity. What fools...and what a crafty trick to get people on bikes, drinking and cruising around vineyards all day with a 4 bottle wine carrier on the back to fill up! It is innate that where there is a hole, humans will want to fill it up with something (keep your mind out of the gutters folks, this is a true scientific fact alright and this is a clean blog so keep it clean).
Needless to say, we had to find a place that ships wine to other countries and as luck would have it, there is just a business that does this and there were pamphlets in every winery advertising this service...lucky us. I guess these is a moral to the story, but I am stumped by what is should be:
Don't bring your wallet when wine tasting.
Don't go whine tasting on bikes with a 4 bottle wine carrier.
Don't taste more than 2 wines at each winery.
Maybe, just don't go wine tasting at all if you are Melissa Goodman or Alexandra Hewett.
Yep, I think that is the moral, but at least we have a dozen bottles of delicious wine to drink when we are back in London missing the gorgeous and fruitful New Zealand wineries.