Winetasting
NEW ZEALAND | Friday, 12 March 2010 | Views [357]
3/12/2010 10:01 PM
We got up this morning around 8:45. Our goal was to get a good run in before the wine tour we had planned. We were planning on doing this run at Ocean Beach (supposedly a really pretty beach in the area), but it was too far away, so we just ran along the boulevard in front of our hostel. Just a quick 5k run, but it was the first real exercise we’d done on this trip, so it was great. Smartly, we loaded up on food once we got back to the hostel to build a good base for wine tasting.
We booked ourselves on a four winery tour (“plus cheese board”) through the Hawkes Bay Region. This is the oldest wine region in NZ (just about 100 years old), and so we rightly started at the oldest winery in all of New Zealand. Every wine there was delicious --- a good way to start the tour. An interesting note about this vineyard is that they use sheep to sheer their crops. I guess there’s a time when the grape is too sour for the sheep’s liking, but the leaves are just perfect. So they let the sheep roam throughout the vineyard and they trim the leaves back to expose the grapes to the sun. Gotta love that Kiwi ingenuity.
From there we went to two other wineries that were just as good. Actually, the third one of the day was the best. We tasted ten different wines, and all were excellent. Of course, too expensive to buy … but great nonetheless. For a little break, we took a detour to the highest point in the Hawkes Bay region. Pretty neat sight, but once you’ve seen a few highest points, you’ve pretty much seen them all.
Then it was on to our last winery --- another good one. All in all, we tasted about 26 different wines. Plus, we got a lot of history about the vineyards and the region itself. Including a cheese board, this whole experience was US $45/person --- not too bad. One interesting note about the region is that it was once (in 1931) covered with water. Then, they had a massive earthquake, and then land literally rose from the sea about 10 feet. Now, there is land where there used to be sea, and it’s hugely noticeable. They had old pictures of the area where the ocean used to be, but now no longer exists. Freaking crazy. After the quake, they said the whole area smelled like dead fish for months because of how quickly the seabed rose. Dang. Intense.
After the wineries, we got back to the hostel, took a quick nap, planned more of the trip, made some dinner, and are now playing Jumbline before bed. We gotta hit the sheets pretty soon here b/c tomorrow will be another early day (off to see the Gannets), and then we have a long drive to Wellington.
