Hawkes Bay and Napier

With snowboarding no longer an option, at least for a few days, we took our leave of the carrot city and headed south towards the coastal town of Napier. Not really knowing what to expect, I nerded it up while Schmo drove. It seems that Napier (being located on quite a turbulent band of earth at the meeting of two tectonic plates) was victim of a rather large earthquake in 1931 which essentially destroyed the entire town and raised parts of the seafloor by several metres. This raised land now actually accommodates the regional airport!

The town itself though was almost entirely rebuilt following the earthquake and is now famous for its art deco architecture. Shamefully, I’ve little to show by the way of photos. Steering away from the modernised shop fronts of the main street, you almost feel you’ve stepped back in time.

Being the only campervan in the campsite on our first night, we figured we would have to find something to entertain ourselves the next day. Napier being the largest city in the Hawkes Bay region, we thought, what else? Wine tour.

Joining 3 other eager tourists, we headed off with our guide Vince who brought us on a leisurely and utterly fab tour around a number of wineries. Or first stop was Moana Wines, which is the only totally organic, totally vegetarian wineries in the region. Like most of the places we visited, the vast majority of their wines are available exclusively at their cellar door, so it was nice to know we were getting something a little different than what is on offer in Tesco! Dan, the winemaker there told us that NZ wine accounts for only 0.21% of all wine sales worldwide – hard to believe when you see the number of NZ wines in Irish supermarkets, but there you go!!!!

Next stop was at a winery run by the Corban family on a site which originally housed a racing stables established by an Irishman by the name of Donnelly, who married a Mauri princess back in the early 1900s! We really do get everywhere (in fact one of the winemakers in Moana was an Irish guy too!) Our third stop was at Trinity Hill, which is a larger winery and we wrapped up at Matariki where the superb Trevor chatted away to the five increasingly talkative and inquisitive tasters (someone has to draw the short straw!). This was another winery set up by a couple of Irish descent, the O’Connors!

Our final stop of the day and a change of beverage saw us hit Rooster’s for some home brewer stout, ale, lager and wheat beer, served by the fantastic Tom, yet another Irish man, from Belfast! The tour proved to me that I can’t help but love wine, I’m Irish, sure it's in my blood!