Hawke's Bay Wine Festival

On Thursday morning we set off towards the Hawkes Bay, which is a 6 hour drive south of Auckland. (We enjoyed a four day weekend this week, taking Thursday off and Friday was a public holiday; Waitangi Day.) The Hawkes Bay is known as wine country and New Zealand and part of our weekend included the Hawkes Bay Wine Festival.

The first three hours of the drive were very familiar to us as it is the drive that we take to many of the popular sites on the North Island. After we hit Taupo, the scenery was new to us – but of course great.
We got to the Hawkes Bay around 4:30 and decided to explore Napier, one of the cities that make up the Bay. Napier was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1930s and had to be completely rebuilt. The city now has an Art Deco theme that it is famous for. We strolled through some of the public gardens before heading off to our final destination, Hastings.
For this trip we decided to try a Kiwi summer tradition and go camping. We rented a tent from a home business in Auckland and were all set. The campground was very nice with lots of open tent sites. We got ourselves set up and went into town for a quick bite to eat. The sun set around 9:30 which left us with not much to do but read by flashlight or sleep, so needless to say, we were in bed pretty early.

The birds were chirping nice and early for us on Friday morning. We were up and running by 7:30 am. We decided to drive to Cape Kidnappers which is a famous golf course. When it opened a few years ago it was ranked #27 in the world. We had a hard time finding the course and when we asked someone where it was, they told us that we had to have permission to enter the property. We found the gate and dialed the course, begging them to let us in. We learned that it never hurts to ask as we were at the Pro Shop within a few minutes. The course was heavenly and the staff were so nice and accommodating.
After taking in the sites of the Cape, we were off to Kemblefield Estate to start our first day of wine tasting. We were told that we had to see Kemblefied, but it’s far away from the festival, so we decided to make an extra trip on Friday. After tasting a few wines we enjoyed a delicious platter of food as we were definitely ready for lunch at that stage. The woman at the vineyard suggested a few other wineries in the area that we should visit, so we mapped out our afternoon to do just that.
The afternoon included Trinity Hill, where after tasting wine we read and napped in the shade, Unison Vineyards, Matariki Wines, and finally Craggy Range where we drank an Avery Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc while snacking on a variety of cheeses. We also stopped to watch a random go carting race that we came across during our journey.
Saturday was the official start to the wine festival. We had no trouble getting to bed early on Friday night, so by 8 am on Saturday we were ready to go again. We walked into town to meet up with our shuttle for the day. We were given tasting glasses and a bus pass that we were told we had to wear on our necks all day. (It was kind of hard to drink from a glass that was tied to your neck, so we didn’t exactly follow all of the rules.)

Our first stop was Beach House Wines, a small vineyard. We only stayed for a short time and were back on the bus towards Elephant Hill – stop #2. When we got off the bus, we were greeted by tour guides who poured us generous glasses of wine to taste. They then walked us through the vineyard explaining that Elephant Hill opened just a few months ago. It was a very nice vineyard but we still didn’t feel like we wanted to spend the rest of the day there, so we were off again to stop #3, Clearview Estate.
Now this was more like what we were looking for. There were vendors selling snacks, cellar door tours, tastings and a restaurant where we were lucky to grab a seat for a delicious lunch in the shade amongst the grape vines. After lunch we hopped back onto the shuttle towards Kim Crawford. The shuttle took us straight through the vineyard which was kind of neat. At Kim Crawford we secured a bale of hay under a shade tree. We had packed a small blanket and travel Yahtzee which came in handy as we sipped wine all afternoon. The vineyard was serving thin crust pizza and ice cream, so we enjoyed that (and plenty of water) as well! The last shuttle back to town was at 4:30, so we were certain to get on one a little bit early. The shuttle dropped us off at Vidal wines where we purchased a final glass of wine for the road (the road was a walk to dinner!)

This morning we were on the road at 7:30 am, thanks to chirping birds and crying babies. We got back to Auckland in the early afternoon and hit the gym in an attempt to burn off some of the calories we drank over the past few days. For dinner we stopped by the Lantern Festival, in celebration of the Chinese New Year. We went to the same festival last year and sadly forgot the camera this year! We dined on scrumptious dumplings and spring rolls which were the perfect end to a wonderful weekend.