Hawkes Bay and its surrounding areas has some of New Zealands most stable climate and is therefore an ideal place to grow wine grapes. Tour operators running wine tasting day trips are plentiful, but renting a bike will save you money which instead could be used for the two to ten dollar fees that most wineries charge for tastings of two to ten wines.
Full of ambitions I started my first tastings when the wineries opened at ten it the mornings, in hope that I over the two days would be able to visit all of Hawkes Bay’s 32 wineries.
On my first day I cycled to Te Moana Peak, down through Havelock North, across TukiTuki river and then from Haumoana into town. With a distance closer to a hundred kilometers I had visited ten wineries where most were open for tastings. Luckily I had someone picking me up afterwards, cooking me a good dinner and letting me retreat to my comfortable bed early in the evening.
With a small hangover and soreness in my bum and legs I started off with a ten am tasting close to Takapau, cycled from there through Fernhill and Puketapu into the city. About the same distance as the day before but this time visiting thirteen wineries. For the tastings I asked to only try the single grape red wines, where most of the wineries then dropped the tasting fees. When arriving in the city I visited the New Zealand wine center to learn about the history and process of wine making and try the virtual wine tasting. Both unfortunately and to my relief there were no-one working with the virtual wine tasting when I got there saving me the 25$ and probably a hangover the next morning.
In two days I covered most of the wineries and learned a whole lot about New Zealand wines. An absolute favorite of the wines would be the 2013 Marzemino, but I also especially enjoyed the 2013 Syrahs from the region. The most personal and friendly wine tastings were at Clearview Estate and Alpha Domus whereas the least were Elephant Hill and Trinity Hill.
The last couple of days have definitely made me want to do more tastings in the future and I will for sure try to do some when I am in Auckland next week or in Israel a couple of weeks after that.
Category: Wine Tasting
Stingrays, Winetasting and Sunrises in Gisborne
Gisborne is known as the surfing capital of New Zealand and the regional capital of New Zealand’s Eastern Cape.
The region is known for its good conditions to grow fruits, nuts and wine grapes. Right when we got to Gisborne we went to a place called Smash Palace where we had ordered wine tasting, which I expected to be a quiet nibbling session of a few wines. What we actually got was much better. We were served several beers, ciders and wines in an informal setting where we were first trying to set words to the tastes before the bar manager Darell gave us his expert opinions. The highlight was when our pizzas arrived, where we got to flambate them shouting “hambre ay ay ay!” while wearing broken glasses and a Mexican hat helmet.
We got up at five thirty the next morning to watch the sunrise and then walk out with some barracuda bait to feed the stingrays that were coming up at low tide. At first we had around ten eagle rays murring up our legs wanting food and some petting on the back, just like a dog would. At the end we were also lucky enough to see a huge short tip ray weighing more than a hundred kilos. When that tried to climb us for food we had to lean on our walking sticks in order not to be knocked over into the water. The stingray feeding was quite an interesting experience, also because these animals were actually wild unlike the ones at stingray farms up on the east coast.
Some huge kingfish also came up to get some food from us
Hunter Valley and Barrington Tops
Driving from Sydney we got a chance to stop by Cessnock in the Hunter Valley to do some wine tasting. The McGuian winery pulled out around ten different wines for us to taste, which made the rest of the drive up to Barrington Tops more fun.
As soon as we arrived the Twistops Retreat in Barrington Top we were asked to put on wetsuits and get ready to go tubing in the river. There were some rapids that managed to tilt a couple of us, but most of it was just a chilled ride down the river in the sun.
When we got back the chef had prepared dinner for us right in time for sunset and a rugbymatch on TV. The rest of the evening was spent playing pool, dart and table tennis with a couple of beers.
The Twistops lodge was far off the beaten track, with absolutely no phobebseevice, and it was great to have an evening to just sit back and relax out in the nature where plenty of wild kangaroos were jumping around. Tomorrow we will be early up to do some surfing.
The Wine Region of Cafayate
The Taiwaneese guy had been sitting next to me on the bus the whole day without saying a word, but after the tasting he suddenly had gotten the curage to come up to me and ask if I wanted to look around the town and have dinner with him, and with a new gotten friend the long ride home went much quicker taking me back to our group in the evening for a last night out in Salta.
Day Trips from Cape Town


If you are interested in hiking, Cape Town also offers some excellent trips that can be done in less than a day. Then I would recommend starting with Lions Head (easy/just a couple of hours), then go up table mountain and take the cable car or rappel down (medium/almost full day) or cross all the Twelve Apostles (hard/several days). You should be able to see all the way to Robben Island from all of these places and get a great view of Cape Town.
But the ultimate daytrip from Cape Town is to go south to Cape Point visiting places as Fish Hoek and Simons Town/ Boulder Beach along the way. I’ll write an own post about this coming up in a few days..