Nicky Dewe eats, drinks and is merry in Hawke’s Bay
You’d be a fool to turn up for a weekend in Hawke’s Bay on a diet. The area is brimming with all kinds of homegrown delicacies and when you combine that with the many vineyards producing some of the world’s finest wines, it’s the perfect place for a gourmet extravaganza.
Happily, eating and drinking are two of my favourite pastimes so I arrived primed and ready. But wanting to fully appreciate the architectural gem that is Napier, and keen to build up a thirst and appetite while I was about it, I kicked off proceedings with one of the city’s famous Art Deco walking tours.
The guides are all volunteers who are passionate about their patch, and they really bring history to life as they share the stories behind each of the iconic monuments. It gives you huge admiration for a little town that rose from the ashes of great tragedy to become a world-renowned enclave of artistic style. It also makes you pleased that the earthquake didn’t occur in the 1970s – the whole place might have been decidedly less impressive.
We finished up outside the old AoP building, a beautifully restored tribute to the Chicago School style of design and now a purveyor of locally made delicacies. We headed directly to the wine cellar and eased our way into the evening by sipping all the different varieties on offer, intermittently cleansing our pallets with locally made bread and olive oil. And with that small sample our course was set.
Dinner that night was at The old Church restaurant. Formerly a place of worship, it’s now a dining room resplendent with chandeliers and velvet chairs. Even the old confessional is intact. I probably should have used it to ‘fess up to an incidence of gluttony – the food at The old Church is delicious.
The next day we hit the wine trail. At the first stop, our guide Greg sat us down with some tasting notes, two glasses, a long row of wine bottles and a spittoon. My husband and I both eyed the spittoon suspiciously. Surely we weren’t going to be spitting out top quality wine? Greg helpfully pointed out that it was only 10.30 in the morning and we were booked on the full-day wine-tasting tour. So we commenced the swirling, inhaling, sipping and spitting routine and began recording what we could smell and taste.
I considered each one long and hard but the only word that came to mind was wine. I looked over to my husband’s notes in the hope that I could cheat off him but he’d drawn a picture instead. “What’s that supposed to be?” I whispered. “A ham sandwich,” he whispered back. “Very good,” said Greg, “Champagne ham is one of the components of this wine’s fragrance.”
Annoyed at being outsmarted by Sam’s drawing, I surveyed the chart outlining all the possible characteristics and soon I was tasting tree bark, pencil shavings, plums, beetroot and cut grass. They may not sound very appealing but, let me tell you, they are.
As the day wore on we moved from one vineyard to another, even taking to the skies in a helicopter that delivered us up over the rocky ridges of Te oata peak, giving us fantastic views across the fertile plains around Hastings and Havelock North, then planting us down at another cellar door. At each stop we sat surveying rows of vines as the winter sun warmed our bodies and the wine warmed our hearts.
The next day we headed off on our Tasty Bay Tour to sample the wares of the area’s boutique food producers. We started at the Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Market, in Hastings, where jars of shiny pickles and chutneys were lined up next to homemade chocolate truffles, organic fruit and vege, nuts and gourmet meats. I wouldn’t normally start the morning with a venison sausage but who can resist? In an attempt to be more civilized, I then chased it down with a chocolate and marzipan Danish and some locally roasted coffee.
The rest of the day consisted of visiting the cheese, honey, chocolate, olive, coffee, icecream and schnapps makers. Suffice to say we left no stone unturned in our quest to fully appreciate every delicious morsel Hawke’s Bay was willing to offer us.
on the way home I promised myself that all this indulgence would end on oonday morning. But as I lugged the large extra bag of goodies I’d purchased behind me, I wondered just how likely that was.
**Factfile
**For more info on deals to Hawke’s Bay, visit deals.hawkesbaynz.com or www.hawkesbaynz.com.The Nautilus Hotel www.nautilusnapier.co.nz.Art Deco Napier www.artdeconapier.com.Indulge Hawke’s Bay specialty store www.indulgehb.co.nz.The old Church Restaurant www.theoldchurch.co.nz.The Grape Escape wine tours www.grapeescapenz.co.nz.The Friendly Kiwi food tours www.thefriendlykiwi.blogspot.com.To find out more about New Zealand’s favourite destinations and experiences visit www.aatravel.co.nz.
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