Day 5: Wood hits the jackpot

A better nights sleep than the previous nights but still woke up early! Surely I’m almost out of this cycle 🙏🏼 . The first stop of the day was to a cute litlle coffee shop near to the Sky Tower – United Coffee Nation. Now I love a breakfast bagel but this bagel topped off all bagels and lined the stomach perfectly for my wine tasting tour.

When I first booked my flight to New Zealand, I started researching things to do. First on my list a wine tour, now we all know wine and me are best friends, so when I googled wine tours in New Zealand, Waiheke island came up. A good friend also told me that it was 100% worth it, so it had to be done. Waiheke Island, a 40 minute ferry ride from Auckland, has 9,000 inhabitants with the Māoris first landing in 2 canoes 900 years ago. I had brought the English summer with me so the views were beautiful. I was basically sailing the boat 😂.

Upon arrival in Waiheke I was greeted by my tour guide. I had booked this tour via Fullers the ferry company, little did I know I was going to hit the jackpot and get my own private tour 💃🏻💃🏻🍷🍷.

First stop wasn’t for wine it was to All Press Olive groves. Now I know what you are thinking, it’s New Zealand, not the Mediterranean, but Waiheke Island’s unique microclimate, volcanic soils and coastal proximity has led to the perfect growth of the olive trees first planted on the estate in 1997. The owner of the groves initially started in coffee, Allpress Espresso, but got bored and ventured to olive oil. The Waiheke blend had to be my favourite, but the herb spread was devine.

The next stop was Batch winery for lunch. As I was the only tourist, we went off piste slightly and headed to Rocky Bay to the South of the island. I was initially shocked at how populated the island was, in my head I was thinking rows and rows of vineyards and bottles of wine. Alas, it reminded me of Cornwall. Lunch was a steak 🤤🤤 with a glass of red, the 2023 Thomas Estate Merlot Petit Verdot Malbec. The tasting notes: “a ruby red with purple hues. The bouquet is bright and intense with aromas and flavours of sweet plum, fresh blackberries, raspberry, baking spice and licorice. The mouthfeel is full bodied, a velvety, fine-grained tannin entwined with lively acidity provides backbone and juiciness. Cellaring potential 2023 to 2028”. It was lush so of course I ordered another.

We were slightly ahead of schedule so visited a cute little bay on the north side of the island called Onetangi meaning “Weeping Sands” in Māori after a battle at Putiki o Kahu pā in 1821 during the Musket Wars. These were a series of as many as 3,000 battles and raids fought throughout New Zealand among Māori between 1806 and 1845, after Māori first obtained muskets. The muskets were introduced when European and American ships began visiting New Zealand in the early 1800s, the indigenous Māori quickly recognised there were great advantages in trading with these strangers, whom they called tauiwi. The Bay of Islands offered a safe anchorage and had a large Māori population. To attract ships, Māori began to supply food, timber and prostitution. In exchange, the Māori population traded for firearms, alcohol and other goods of European manufacture. This gave Russell the first European settlement of New Zealand the nickname “Hell hole of the Pacific.” Anyhow, I will stop with the history lesson and back to Onetangi, a very quaint little beach area with a residence owned by the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

If you look carefully in the photo above you can see an island in the distance, this is natures love island, species which are about to become extinct are sent there to do the deed, thus increasing the population . It’s actual name is Little Barrier Island – clearly living up to its name and having few barriers from preventing the reproduction of rare species.

Back to the wine, next stop Cable Bay Vineyard, here I sampled a white, rose and red, or in wine speak a viognier, a pinot roseé and a blended red. There was a nice little wine cellar too and a view across the bay.

The final stop was Mudbrick Vineyard, this had to be my favourite of the three. The wine connoisseur was so knowledgable and told me a lot about why certain grapes grow in certain conditions, back to the science lesson – the Pinot Noir grape can’t grown in humid conditions. It prefers cooler evenings as otherwise it heats up to quickly and splits prior to being ripe leading to bad wine. Who knew. Here I got to try a white, a rose and 2 reds.

It was then time to head back to the ferry terminal for the boat trip back! As you can imagine, rubbish sleep, wine and a moving boat led to me reenacting Churchill the nodding dog. But when I did have my eyes open the sun was setting nicely over Auckland.

Today has been a top day, it’s 6pm and I’m struggling to keep my eyes open! Must stay awake longer.

Auckland it’s been a pleasure. Next stop Rotorua 💃🏻💃🏻