There was stunning lakeside golf here as well. At the Kelvin Heights course in Queenstown, storm winds on the shore-lined fifth hole blew so ferociously that I could hardly stand upright to hit the ball, and when I did, the gusts transformed my usual disastrous hook into the water into a magnificent wind-aided power fade that landed smack in the center of the fairway. As I walked to my ball, I spied the aptly named Remarkables Range behind me and thought to myself that amid this grandeur you naturally feel like a smaller, humbler version of yourself, lucky to be alive and breathing. Maybe the most extreme sport, after all, is to be suddenly fixed in a place so completely that time and space drop away, leaving you with only the pure vista, the breeze, and the ground beneath your feet.

The weather in Central Otago is a bit harsher than in the other wine regions we visited, a semi-continental climate with hard frosts in winter and hot, dry days in summer, but with free-draining gravelly soil and a long, cool-night growing season for slow maturation of fruit (like Oregon's Willamette Valley and of course the Côte d'Or)—a perfect place for pinot noir. There are nearly three dozen producers here, the oldest of which has been making commercial wine only since 1987. It's amazing to consider how elegant and nuanced these wines are, given that they're from relatively young vines. Some of the highlights came from the estates of Van Asch, Valli, and Rippon—whose spot on the shores of pristine Lake Wanaka, with snow-dusted mountains in the distance, is surely one of the most beautiful vineyard sites anywhere in the world. Picture a glass-clear Alpine lake with towering mountains shouldering the horizon, neat rows of leafy vines running down to the water from your perch atop the gently sloped hillside. Someone else might prefer the vistas to be purely natural, might consider any cultivation a distraction, but to me the sight of the modest, striving hand of man amid such beauty makes the beauty all the more poignant. Down valley, I found my favorite wine of the entire trip, an '03 pinot noir from the Pisa Range Estate, whose earthy bouquet was so redolent and exquisitely layered with hints of river rock and dark cherry that I wanted to buy the new block of proposed vineyard land which the affable owners, Warwick and Jenny Hawker, had up for sale, and share a piece of the terroir myself.

Which is what I'm considering now, standing twenty miles upstream from the vineyard on the banks of the Clutha, fly rod in hand, the night fast encroaching. For the more I consider the notion of terroir, the more it expands beyond just wine—especially when I travel, the fuller picture of a place always more remarkable and complex than at first blush, a surprise and revelation and sudden paradigm all at once. What we trace on every journey, the very pleasure we pursue, is a private idea of beauty as much as beauty itself; for me it's an idea of what can arise and be crafted from on-hand materials, from the destinies of both geographic accident and human influence, what can come from an impassioned and skilled artisan, whether fashioning a stunning hiking trail or golf hole or distilling the flavors of a distinctive local foodstuff or wine. You can certainly take it home with you, in a bottle or a box, but the truest savor of the land, you discover, can become a part of you as well. If you're patient—if you let it—it filters in.

I know there's a bottle of Pisa Range in the lodge, patiently waiting for me, but I'm thinking now I'll bring it back home instead, save it for when I begin to forget. For now, the incessant rush of the swift wine-dark water is like a mellifluous turbine, a ceaseless generator that sings to the ears. Let it run, I think, for I'm not moving yet. Let the full night come. I don't need to see the path back up. I almost know it now.