Hawke’s Bay Wine Tasting

No trip would be complete without first trying some of the local wines. Hawke’s Bay is a fairly well known as it is the second largest wine region in New Zealand and produces a pretty good variety of wines.

First stop was Stonecroft Wines. Fortunately it was after 1030am so they were open and ready to serve up a tasting of their 8 or so varieties. As the driver, I limited myself to only 7.

Just as with the South Island, good whites and acceptable reds, although their advertising claims that Merlot/Cab blend and Syrah are their best known varieties.  We grabbed up a bottle of Chardonnay and made our way to the next vineyard, Ngatarawa Winery.

Pulling in we noticed that the tasting room was actually located inside the stables. No longer used for horses, the stables had been converted to a tasting room many years ago after the original owner made his fortune in horse racing. I don’t remember the entire story just that the horse he raised won the NZ Cup and was a 200-to-1 bet. The wine, well lets just say he did better with the horse.

Next, off to Crossroads Winery. Once again good Chard so Collette had a good time. By now she was asking everyone where they got their tattoo, even if they didn’t have one, and was showing off hers (she doesn’t have one either).

Fall has arrived

Noticing that we had been tasting for about 2hrs, we decided to try one more winery that also served lunch, Mission Estate Vineyards. Great choice! This winery is more along the lines of what you see in Napa with a large mansion, manicured grounds and a restaurant that has great views and serves great food.

Mission Estate Winery was a real mission established in 1851 by French Marist missionaries. This winery also claims to be the birthplace of New Zealand wines. Instead of doing a tasting, we ordered a glass of Pinot to go with our lunch. I had lamb while Collette had duck, and we both had the duck-fat fried potatoes – very yummy!

Lamb with vegetables

Duck with rice

Those damn good duck-fat fried potatoes!!!!

After this, it was head back to the B&B and watch the sun set over the Pacific. Tomorrow we head back to Auckland for the night and then catch our flight to Sydney so we can come back home. It’s been a great trip, wonderful people, places, neat things we saw, just perfect. I know there are some who’ll say that 12hrs on a plane is too long to go anywhere but it was sure worth it for us.