Follow your nose
Jonathan Ray takes a tour through New Zealand's wine country
Forgive me if I state the obvious, but New Zealand is a very long way away. No, really, it is. If you go with the estimable Air New Zealand, you fly for 11 hours to Los Angeles, where you get the chance to stretch your legs by queuing for an hour for the privilege of spending another hour in the surreal hell that is an American transit lounge, after which you reboard the same plane for the 12-hour flight to Auckland. If you want to go on to Hawke's Bay, as I did, you transfer to yet another flight — albeit for only an hour — in order to reach your destination at Napier.
But is the journey worth it? Definitely. And as I have just discovered, you don't have to go to New Zealand for a month's grand tour — a fortnight is a perfectly feasible trip. No need to try to cram everything in; simply go on the Classic New Zealand Wine Trail and save the bits of the country that you miss for another time.
The trail runs for 240 miles between Napier, in Hawke's Bay, on the east coast about halfway down North Island, through Martinborough to Blenheim in Marlborough, at the top of South Island. In truth, it isn't so much a trail as a suggested self-drive tour through these great wine regions. The distance is roughly equivalent to driving between Canterbury and Exeter, but with a level of traffic commensurate with a population of 3.9 million rather than 58 million, in a country much the same size as Britain. There are no motorways and the speed limit is 100kph (62.5mph), but the roads are a joy to drive on and if one occasionally wobbles into the verge while gawping at the scenery, as I did, there is nobody around to remonstrate.
The instigator of the trail, British expat Mike Laven, explained the thinking behind it. 'It came about because I got fed up with explaining how to get to Martinborough. These three regions account for 70 per cent of all the country's wines and so it made sense to make it an official route. We encourage visitors to travel through — as visitors here always do — but suggest that they don't do it as fast as they can, but simply follow our route in their own good time. Wine is the theme, the USP, but there are a million other things to do.'
With that build-up, I couldn't wait to get started. I arrived at Napier airport at 8 a.m. to find my hire car waiting. I spent the morning looking round Napier itself, an exquisite art-deco town that was complete ly rebuilt in the 1930s after a devastating earthquake. By lunchtime I was more than ready to pop into one of Hawke's Bay's 30 or so wineries, all of which welcome visitors with open arms. I started off at Church Road and had a simple but utterly perfect lunch of crayfish salad under the trees next to the winery. The sun was shining, the birds were singing and the Pinot Gris was chilling as suddenly I realised that I Was Having A Nice Time.
I spent the next few days in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand's answer to Bordeaux thanks to its world-class Cabernetand Merlot-based wines, staying in the wonderfully chic Greenhill The Lodge and wandering from winery to winery. Although they are not far apart, you still need a car to get from one to another and unless you can dragoon someone into driving for you, as I managed to do, heroic self-restraint is needed. The likes of Sileni Estate, Te Awa Farm, Craggy Range and Clearview all try to outdo each other not only with their wines but also with their restaurants. The quality of both is dazzling and of a consistently higher standard than any other wine region I have been to. There wasn't much to do in the evenings, but after yet another gastronomic blowout that didn't bother me, although folk spoke warmly of the infamous nights at the Hastings niterie, Diva. 'Oh yes,' said expat Ian Thomas, the local egg man and purveyor of premium vintage compost, Crappe, 'you swap your wife at Diva on Saturday night and pick her up again at the Farmers' Market on Sunday.' Maybe next time.
I headed south to Martinborough, a twoto three-hour drive from Hawke's Bay along State Highway 2, through beguiling scenery that is a rough cross between Tuscany and the Yorkshire Dales. Martinborough is New Zealand's Burgundy, put on the wine map thanks to its sublime Pinot Noirs and dozens of small-scale boutique wineries, all of which are within walking distance of one another. Few of them have their own restaurants but this is more than made up for by the likes of the Martinborough Hotel (where I stayed for a couple of nights) and the White Swan in Greytown. (The waiter at my table in this latter establishment was wonderfully lugubrious and camp. 'Are you ready to order yet, or do I have to be thrashed again by chef?' he asked.) Thence to Wellington for a three-night stay (Te Papa Museum highly recommended) before taking what must be one of the most beautiful ferry rides in the world, across the Cook Strait from Wellington to Picton. The surrounding Marlborough Sounds are jaw-droppingly stunning with, I hate to say it, crystal-clear waters, and it is hard to think of a more romantically situated hotel than the Bay of Many Coves Resort, reachable only by boat. Two nights here in peaceful self-indulgence and then it was off to spend a few days in Blenheim, right in the heart of Marlborough's much celebrated wine region, where I toasted the trail's end with copious amounts of the local Sauvignon Blanc.
I spun my journey out for two weeks, but it could easily be done in a week. As well as eating and drinking myself to a blissful standstill, I had a helicopter ride over Cape Kidnappers (note: never fly in a helicopter after ingesting two helpings of double-chocolate crème brillee; it soon becomes ungested) and went hot-air-ballooning over Lake Warapara (undertaking an exhilarating 'splash and dash'), horse trekking 600 metres up the foothills of the Tararua Mountains, hiking — what Kiwis call 'tramping' — along Queen Charlotte's Track, and yachting in the Marlborough Sounds. I even did a loop-the-loop in a vintage Chinese warplane (note: never execute such manoeuvres after downing a bottle of Marlborough Sauvignon and a plate of greenshell mussels, for the same reason alluded to above).
The Classic New Zealand Wine Trail is a destination in itself, and my advice is to resist the temptation to visit Mount Cook, Rotorua or Queenstown and save them for your dotage. The part of New Zealand covered by the trail is far less touristy but no less enjoyable. The distances aren't long, the food and the wine are of staggering quality (and differ so much between the regions) and, as Mike Laven boasted, there are a million things to do. I have just had the time of my life, and it would be fair to say that I have returned home with my gob not so much smacked as pinned to the wall, trussed up, and well and truly spatchcocked.
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