Saturday, November 16th, 2013
Napier is a fascinating little city. In 1931 it was devastated by one of the country's deadliest earthquakes and was almost entirely wiped from the map. It was rebuilt within two and a half years in the Art Deco and Spanish Mission styles fashionable at that time and is now regarded as one of the finest collections of Art Deco in the world.
We began our day with a sun-drenched outdoor patio breakfast of Bircher's Muesli at 'Milk and Honey', a restaurant on the coast. We first enjoyed this breakfast treat in Cairns over 6 weeks ago and continue to have it whenever possible.
With our stomachs well-coated, we headed downtown to the New Zealand Wine Centre for some serious wine sniffing and tasting - before noon!! Here we were going to learn about Hawkes Bay region red wines. We began our visit in the aroma room where there were tinctures of over 70 aromas for us to experience and familiarise ourselves. Following that we could engage in a quiz of "Guess the Aroma"... grapefruit, plum, leather, mushroom, smoke, black current, licorice.....you name it!
Next we were taken into a theatre where in front of us was a flight of 6 glasses of red wine from 6 different Hawkes Bay wineries - mostly blends of merlots, cabernets, malbecs and syrahs.
We were also presented with a taste rating sheet and pencil. Then the movie began. The film took us on a biplane flight over Hawkes Bay to view the vineyards from the air before landing at each of the 6 wineries presenting today's tastes. At each stop, the wine-maker (on film) poured himself a glass of the same wine in our glass and discussed the aroma as we joined him with ours. Yes, if he said it smelled like ripe plums with a hint of blackberry and leather we smelled it too! When he/she took a mouthful and rolled it around and told us how the wine affected the palate and the 'nice long finish' we do the same. We rated and commented on our individual tasting sheets and, before we knew it, the biplane had taken us over to the next winery for another experience! Following the film and tasting, we retasted and compared before heading into the shop. We managed, quite easily, to find wines we liked so were able to purchase a few bottles for future enjoyment.
Following our wine tasting experience we spent a couple of hours walking around the area and along the Esplanade to view some of the Art Deco architecture and enjoy the ocean views.
Our next stop would be Palmerston North and we'd been advised it was only a 2 hour drive from Napier. Instead of back-tracking some of the same country we saw on the way here yesterday, we decided to take a different route. It would've been fine, had we not made two wrong turns. We had faith that our GPS recalculations would get us back on track soon - but it wasn't nearly soon enough! We ended up on rolling hills of country roads in the midst of a cycling race with hundreds of cyclists spread over at least 60 kilometers. We passed vineyards we'd seen on our earlier wine film tour, sheep farms and drove up and down hills passing cyclists for over an hour and a half before we finally got back exactly to where we'd made our second wrong turn!!
Our 2 hour drive to Palmerston North took 4.5 hours :(
Once we arrived at our destination, my fabulous niece, Ngaire, was preparing dinner for us. Her mother, Bev, sister Ava, and friends, Robin and family, also contributed to a fabulous evening of food and conversation. It was a great ending to an eventful day.
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