Late summer is an ideal time to visit the Hawke's Bay region for a tasteful getaway. Photo / Getty Images
Late summer is an ideal time to visit the Hawke's Bay region for a tasteful getaway. Photo / Getty Images
Late summer is one of the very best times to visit a winegrowing region – a last hoorah to revel in the sunshine as it gives a last blessing to ripening grapes. As harvest comes around, usually beginning in March, many of the cellar doors shut up shop because all hands are needed on deck – or rather, in vines. Thankfully in Hawke's Bay you won't be left thirsty. As I discovered on a recent visit, there are some fabulous tasting experiences beyond the cellar door – for both the wine-curious and those seeking something of a different spirit.
Dual decades-long backgrounds in winemaking give Kate Galloway and David Ramonteu enviably honed flavour-building skills, which they're now putting to work in distilling, founding Hastings Distillers in 2019. Ramonteu greets us at the door of the tasting room, housed in a former print shop on Heretaunga St – at the heart of the city's artisan-rich East 200 block. The space has been stunningly overhauled in keeping with the elegant spirit of the era. On offer are tasting flights, cocktails and a snack menu.
Kate Galloway, co-founder of Hawke's Bay's Hastings Distillers. Photo / Brian Culy
Ramonteu joins us with tasting flights of three of the distillery's gins. East Block 200 is a classic – the perfect gin for a negroni, while Albertine weighs in with an impressive 38 botanicals in its DNA – this beauty is for sipping on ice or with a premium tonic water. The third gin we taste is a special edition, Ignis Fatuus – named for a natural phenomenon of flickering lights over swampland caused by the combustion of gases. The gin, known as I.F for short, is a tribute to our ancient kauri forests and a nod to the mostly Dalmatian immigrants who dug for gum. Ethically sourced kauri gum features alongside a host of other evocative botanicals, and the resinous flavour puts me in mind of things ceremonial. It's dark, smoky, and peaty … one for whisky lovers to seek out, for sure.
While some rare, exotic botanicals have to be sourced from overseas, everything else used in the distillery is grown in the couple's substantial organic and biodynamic garden, or wild-foraged. Galloway has a knack for foraging and is also fascinated with intricacies. "She'll do things like soaking feijoa leaf in alcohol prior to the distillation, to achieve a particular flavour," says Ramonteu.
Those with a penchant for bitter orange aperitifs (that's me) must try L'Opera, and since our visit the couple have also released a red vermouth, Roubis – redolent with red berry, spice, cacao, and herb notes. Clever you if you've now calculated that a truly "made in Hawke's Bay" negroni is now a reality. A dry vermouth is set to emerge from the barrel this year – keep an eye out, martini fans.
A tasting flight at Hastings Distillers in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand's first producer of certified organic artisan spirits and liqueurs. Photo / Anna King Shahab
The Heretaunga Wine Studio is tucked away in the centre of Havelock North. In fact, it's accessible through the back door of Malo restaurant, which is very handy for luscious lunching before or after. We enjoyed kingfish ceviche, prawn and 'nduja linguine, and grilled chicken flatbread – all of it lick-the-plate delicious - before slipping through into the Smith & Sheth cellar door, from where our journey begins. While you can call into the cellar door, the wine studio experience must be booked in advance, and you'll want to allow at least two and a half hours for this immersive encounter.
We're warmly greeted by our sommelier host, Sonja Eberly – and when I say warmly, I mean super toasty; it'd be hard not to be charmed by her keen sense of hospitality, as well as her incredible knowledge which she shares without ever getting close to things feeling pretentious – there's zero wine snobbery at play here.
The Heretaunga Wine Studio is tucked away in the centre of Havelock North, accessible through the back door of Malo restaurant - very handy for luscious lunching before or after. Photo / Supplied
Eberly leads us across the courtyard to the studio and we're instantly cocooned in its stylish surroundings – a row of wine barrels nestles up to comfy toffee-leather sofas facing a cinematic screen, and subtle warm lighting grazes the dark walls. We settle in and the show begins – elegant cinematic pieces bolstered by Eberly telling the story of several tracts of land that produce Smith & Sheth wines, stretching back to ancient times, through to the planting of it with grapevines.
The terroir Gimblett Gravels is associated with some of Aotearoa's finest wines but, as Eberly describes, in the early 1980s it was viewed in a farming and growing sense as a wasteland and earmarked for a quarry.
"A couple of young bucks in the wine industry saw potential in the stony soils and heat needed to ripen red and chardonnay grapes", explains Sonja, and their petition to thwart the quarry going ahead was eventually successful. One of those young wine guys was Steve Smith who, along with Brian Sheth, today makes exceptional wines from parcels of land in the Ōmāhu appellation of Gimblett Gravels. Eberly's guided tasting of Smith & Sheth cru wines – some straight from the barrels here in the studio – completes the sensory journey. One of the wines we taste is a blend of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, and tempranillo and is called Cantera – that's Spanish for quarry (see what they did there?).
"Today, there's not one piece of land available in Gimblett Gravels", says Eberly, "It's one of the most expensive places to buy land in the winegrowing world".
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For more things to see and do in the region, go to hawkesbaynz.com
