Cheers!
Hawke’s Bay is a well known grape growing region. I took a tour this afternoon with a small group - a Scottish couple, an American couple and a young German. The first winery looked beautiful - the building used to be on the edge of town and housed “retiring” monks. The building was carved into six pieces, moved to a higher location and is now the home of the Mission Winery. We sampled four wines and enjoyed them.
The second winery was much smaller and we were made really welcome by the part-owner who treated us to six wines and a humorous and informative chat about his business and wine in general going into, for instance, the history of “Shiraz”. Apparently this was a place in Persia visited by the crusaders and an Anglo-German knight took cuttings of grapes before he returned to Europe. He stopped off in the Rhone valley, planted the cuttings, decided he rather liked it there and didn’t return to England.
I bought a bottle of red and one of white for us to treat ourselves to later.
The afternoon ended with a trip up to Te Mata Peak, 339 metres above sea level and a wonderful vantage point for views throughout three hundred and sixty degrees over the whole area.
Jean
4 comments:
Jean, just going back to the Pohutakawa honey. Hopefully you've seen some of the trees with their red flowers by now. they're known as New Zealand Christmas Trees. Enjoying ther blog very much. Takes me back to our days there. Church Road vineyard's very nice if you haven't already moved on southwards. If so, enjoy the Martinborough wines on your way to wellington.
Hi Simon
Enjoying your comments too The winery visit was great, but as you will see we are now down in Wellington so weren't able to visit others. Maybe in South Island!
Good luck with the Interislander ferry and hope you don't get tossed around too much. The Picton and Marlborough Sounds areas are lovely and Cloudy Bay vinyard used to be a very pleasant place to indulge in one of the world's best Chardonnays or Sauv Blancs. Farewell Spit is also a fun trip to make. In Wellington is it windy? if so, recommend a trip to the airport to watch the planes landing -- or trying to!!
Hi Simon
Weather was finne, if a little cloudy, but ferry no problem as you'll see on blog. Only have two days here i nelson but will look out for the vineyard and spit.
Jean
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