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Published: December 13th 2010
Our time in Central Hawke's Bay was not exclusively agriculturally educational. It was also gastronomically amazing!
Suzanne, Patrick, Jim, Carole and Emily set off one morning to go wine tasting. The first winery Suzanne took us to was very charming. It is called Ngatawara and the estate was formerly a successful racing stables. The tasting room / shop is set in a very picturesque stable block. Inside, we were the first customers of the day so a friendly and informative fellow named Frank was able to take the time needed to train us in the art of wine tasting. We learned how to hold our glasses correctly (by the stem, that is!), to swirl and examine the 'legs', to sniff, to swirl vigorously to awaken the aromas, to think about and describe the aromas we were smelling, and finally to taste, sucking the wine in somewhat noisily with air through our front teeth to aerate the wine and pass it over certain important taste buds on a certain part of the tongue. OR, something like that! It was very fun. Emily was the best at it. "What do you smell?" Frank would ask as she
swirled and sniffed. "It's fruity" she'd reply. "What fruit?" he would question. "Perhaps, apricots?" Emily would answer. "What else do you detect?" Frank would probe....and on it would go. Her answers became quite elaborate....I decided that if she ever needs quick work, she could probably write advertising copy for wine merchants.
After we finished tasting and buying wine there, Suzanne took us up to a very high point of land called Te Mata Peak and we had a great view of the Hawke's Bay region, from Napier and Hastings and south down the coast. Then we moved on to a different winery called Clearview where Pete joined us. Again, a very knowledgeable staff person educated us in the different wines they produced there. We chose a bottle and had an excellent lunch in their charming courtyard. Then it was off to a local cheese factory. More tasting and purchasing. Any of you who know of Jim's high standard for cooking and generosity will appreciate that a lot of money changed hands this day.
Each night that we were at Suzanne and Pete's we enjoyed a tremendous meal and all were quite different. One evening we had a fabulous
dinner of leg of lamb cooked by Suzanne with a Jamie Oliver recipe. It was accompanied by home made ice cream that Emily made with milk from her milking of the cow. There being no ice cream freezer, this involved removing the concoction from the freezer every 20 minutes to stir with a fork (for 6 hours). Emily says she's not making it again. Another evening Jim barbecued a local fish called trevalli and we had kumura fries (sweet potato or yam fries to us in North America.) And a very exotic meal for us was a delicious dinner of home grown venison that Pete prepared. Nightly, hor d'ouevres would include local cheeses and venison 'carpaccio', locally purchased pates, and of course - wine.
Good thing we were going tramping the next week so we could lose some of the accumulated weight from these culinary delights!
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Bil
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Caught up .. mostly
Hello Carol (author) and Jim (photographer etc)., Thanks to your sending the link to your travel blog, I've caught up on most of your exploits up to Blog #11. I couldn't find #1, #2 or #4 blogs. This approach to chronicling is super!! Great photos and informative descriptions to accompany. Way to go. I'm seriously thinking of pulling the plug at YC and getting passage to Oceana ..in particular- NZ. Your having a vehicle is so sensible and gives you such versatility. Keep them coming .. as you write.... I keep track on Google Earth. Ya gotta love technology!