Martinborough

We took advantage of a later breakfast time at the Adventure Lodge to rest from our hike yesterday. We had a 330 km drive to a little town of Martinborough today.

It is amazing how little traffic there is on the roads. I think we have driven for two days without encountering a traffic light. The traffic circles work great at keeping things moving when you go through the little towns. A far cry from the hustle and bustle of SW Florida and the five minute traffic signals.

Our drive today took us through the carrot capital of New Zealand, Ohakune. A ski town that is also produces 2/3 of the carrots for the north island. When the snow bunnies invade the town, they no doubt love the carrots! We drove by the giant carrot before I could stop and get a photo.

The next hi-light of the day’s trip was the town of Taihape, the “gumboot capital of the world”. It featured a giant gumboot on the main street.

We had a brief stop at Stormy Point Lookout which provided a terrific vista of the south central farmland.

Next we came across the Tui Brewery. A funky NZ brewery and I had already sampled some. We did a look around the cafe/hospitality centre but didn’t want to wait for the next tour so continued on our way.

We arrived at Martinborough at around 2:00 pm and checked into our accommodation. We were absolutely blown away by our “winemaker’s cottage”. An absolutely stunning suite in the middle of a vineyard with full high end kitchen, living room with fireplace, tv, couch, chair, stereo, fabulous bedroom, infinity shower, two person jacuzzi.

We were walking distance to the downtown square (about 1.5 km) so we set out to explore on foot. 

There were several wineries within walking distance however a lot of them shut down their cellar doors at 3:00 pm. We did manage to find two which provided essentially private tastings as we were the only guests. Really small cottage wineries. The specialty here is pinot noir. Our first stop was Cambridge Road where we were hosted by the owners. A really small scale winery that produces about 1000 cases a year. I liked the Pinot/Syrah blend but at $60/bottle thought it was a bit pricey.

The next place that was still open was Martinborough Vineyard, home of “The World’s Best Pinot Noir”. (Janet, you may want to fact check that claim with John!). I would say that their Pinot was quite good and they happened to have some of their $225/bottle open for tasting.

We walked back to our suite and had a chance to kick back and relax a bit. There was a full laundry so Chris had a chance to do a quick wash before our supper at their great restaurant. We were surprised at how uncrowded it was for such a great meal. I think our best yet. Florida restaurant wait times and service suck.

Back to the room. A soak in the jacuzzi and expending my last bit of energy in posting the blog.