Napier, Martinborough and Hawkes Bay

Hejsan alla där hemma, and everyone else!

Today is the 2nd of April and I'm now in Auckland, which is the biggest city in New Zealand. Tomorrow I will fly south to Queenstown and Central Otago to work at Felton Road, for about three weeks, then I'll return to Auckland again before flying home to Swedala!

Art Deco and Wine! (25th-30th of March)

Arrived to a warm and sunny Napier with Åsa (my Swedish travel mate) we got a room at Archie's Bunker a nice Hostel in the center of town. We took a stroll through the city down towards the supermarket to by some food for dinner. Napier is a really cool little city on the east coast of the North Island, because of a big earthquake inn 1931 most of the buildings in the center of the town are built in the Art Deco architect style.
Back again at the hostel I discovered that the kitchen was not of very high standards, hungry as we where this became quite frustrating before I finally managed to make a noodle stir-fry.
Even if the kitchen wasn't that well equipped there was very nice people sitting there, we meet a couple from Barcelona who did a around the world trip together. On Thursday we took a walk up to a view-point with our new friends from Barcelona, and then we had a beer together at an Irish pub. Then I booked a rental car for a few days so that I could drive around and visit wineries.

Early on Friday morning I got into my rental Nissan and started driving south towards Martinborough. After approx three hours I reached the small town of Masterton where I booked a room at a hostel and then had a nice steak sandwich for lunch. Back an the road again I drove on towards Martinborough and Escarpment where I had an appointment with owner and winemaker Larry McKenna. Arriving I got a quick tour of the vineyards (only two days before harvest began) and he also showed me the small but nice winery, where his crew was cleaning everything extensively before harvest. Larry had no wines open for tasting but he had grapejuice samples of Riesling, Pinot Gris and six different clones of Pinot Noir. Trying grape juice is very different than trying wine the main difference you could pick up was intensity and acidity, but a nice experience. Saying goodbye to Larry I got two bottles of wine to try with food at a later time. Then I drove back to the town of Martinborough and stopped by a wine shop to see if they had any wines from the famous "Dry River" they had three different white wines so I choose the Pinot Gris.
Next day I had breakfast at the same place where I had lunch the day before. I also got my hopes up because I saw a poster that said "Flight of the Concords" where playing in Masterton the 31st of March. I off course had to check if they had tickets but to no ones surprise they had sold out in just a few hours :-(
Never the less I took the car to the Stonehenge of New Zealand quite interesting as they've built a replica of the British original. After the cultural indulgence I drove back to Marinborough to visit Ata Rangi sins i read in a wineguide that visiting Martinborough to try Pinot Noir and excluding Ata Rangi would be "like visiting the Louvre and skip the Mona Lisa". One could probably phrase it different but there Pinot Noir was defiantly among the top ones on New Zealand, for the price of 65 NZD I still think the 2007 (with just a few years in the cellar) would give any good quality Bourgogne a good fight.
After visiting one more winery in the area i decided to head back to Napier, where i meet up with Åsa that had just been to the cinema! Then we struggled for a while to find a Art Deco restaurant that Åsa had seen the day before on a guided tour she took in the city.
On Saturday we took the car to the farmers market in Hastings (nearby city) and had some coffee and also did some shopping for dinner. Then we drove to Te Awa winery and tried all of there wines which was really good, we also stayed for an excellent lunch. To finish of the tour we visited Seleni Estate a quite big family owned winery. I tried 6 different wines and they where mostly renowned for there Merlot which I would agree was there best wine.
Back home at the hostel I cooked entrecote with a nice salad from all the veggies we bought at the farmers market, Åsas friend Yuka (Japanese) joined us for dinner.
Last day in Hawkes Bay I drove to famous Craggy Range, surprisingly the girl that had helped us with the tasting at Te Awa was also working here so I meet her again. Craggy Range made very high quality and also very elegant wines, with good concentration of fruit but not at all over extracted but just very elegant and balanced. So If you're in to wine and don't mind spending a a little more than usually Craggy Range is definitely wort the money. My next stop was Elephant hill which was a very recently opened winery, that planted it's first grapes in 2003. The wines have to be judged accordingly and where not great by any means but very clean and well made with good potential. I had a nice lunch on the patio in the sun :-)
My last wine adventure of the day was Trinity Hill, which had a great number of different wines, Montepulciano, Pinot Gris, Tempranillo, Bordeaux blend, Pinot Noir and Syrah för att nämna några :-) The best one was there prestige Syrah called Homage which had been given a good amount of Parker (American wine-writer) points.

To conclude I've had nice sunny weather and tried allot of nice wines the last week, most pleasant surprise is the very nicely blackpepper fragrant Syrah's of Hawkes Bay.

Ha det toppen!!
/Martin