Going home: Hawke's Bay a remote land of fashion and flavour

Fruity pleasures are a way of life in Hawke's Bay.
LIBBY MIDDLEBROOK on wine, apples and the "home of the plum".

It was a good place to hide from the watchful eyes of a tiny town.

In my rusting Mazda 808, I would climb the narrow road to the top of Te Mata Peak, in the weeks before regular wagging brought my school career to an abrupt end, to read books and hang out with friends who were equally averse to attending geography class.

At 399m above sea level, the peak is one of the first places in New Zealand to see the sun each day and it still affords a 360-degree view of Hawkes Bay.

In summer, hectares of brown fields stretch outwards from the summit like a giant, mud-soaked quilt.

Vineyards and orchards line the banks of the brown Tukituki River below, where I swam as a child and complained when my father caught and released undersized trout, when they were supposed to be for lunch.

Pockets of housing sprawl across the landscape. To the east lies Flaxmere, where unemployment and crime are widespread.

To the north is Napier, a coastal town with a magnificent harbour and port and a history of violent crime and murder-mysteries involving innocent young girls.

Today the city is better known for its architecture. Levelled by earthquake and fire in 1931, it was rebuilt during the great depression in the styles of the thirties - Spanish mission and art deco.

There are guided art deco walking tours, as well as fantastic antique shopping, restaurants, galleries and tourist attractions, such as Marineland and the Aquarium, along the city's marine parade.

About 20 minutes' drive from Napier is Hastings, like a frumpy bridesmaid next to its glamorous neighbour.

But what Hastings lacks in personality, it makes up for in its location.

The surrounding countryside is filled with wineries, and two white-sand surf beaches, Waimarama and Ocean Beach, are only a 30-minute drive away.

Two minutes from the centre of Hastings, nestled in the foothills of Te Mata Peak, is my home town, Havelock North.

It is a small settlement of European-car-driving residents, easily identified by their boat shoes, moleskins, fob chains and aertex shirts. The village has been labelled "home of the plum" by some, but not because of fruit production.

Proper vowel pronunciation is more faithfully and widely adhered to here than any other New Zealand town I know.

Havelock North can be suffocatingly small to some who live there, but a population boom is redefining it.

It has at least five restaurants, bars, cafes and boutique clothing stores, and a cheerful collection of gardens, meticulously maintained by council workers.

The skateboard bowl is still there, next door to the Havelock North baths, where we used to jump the fence for midnight swims after a night out at the Happy Tav.

The pub has a new name, but it still attracts a similar crowd of teenage boys, dressed in shades of blue, who spill into the gardens when the bar shuts at 3 am, ripping out plants and picking fights with one another.

On the outskirts of the village, and dotted around other parts of Hawke's Bay, are some of the country's top wineries.

Hawke's Bay used to be best known as "the fruit bowl of New Zealand", but poor export prices have crippled the horticulture industry.

Growers, once wealthy from their apple bounties, are increasingly converting to other niche industries, such as olives and organics. The soil where my parents' apple and pear trees once stood now sustains a 20ha field of squash plants.

As the Hawke's Bay horticulture industry has deteriorated, the region's reputation for wine has taken off.

Ten years ago, the region had about 14 wineries in the region. Today, it has more than 40. Vineyards cover more than 4000ha.

The clear days and dry summers make Hawke's Bay the perfect climate for grape growing, save the odd hail storm or frost.

As a child, summers there seemed to last forever, compared with the endless grey days of Palmerston North, where I was born and lucky enough to leave aged 7, when my father was transferred to Hawke's Bay.

I sampled my first fine wine during an amateur burglary, which came about after I befriended the stepdaughter of Chris Pask, joint owner of winery CJ Pask.

One night, as the winemaker slept, two 14-year-old girls squeezed through an unlocked window to the Hastings winery, selected a bottle of CJ Pask's finest red, and gulped the lot.

But the wine was wasted on my inexperienced stomach. It was watering Mr Pask's garden less than an hour later.

CJ Pask is more pleasing to my palate these days.

The winery has won a raft of national and international awards, as have other Hawke's Bay wine labels, such as Esk Valley, Kim Crawford, Vidal, Kemblefield and Te Mata Estate.

The oldest winery in the country, The Mission, has racked up its own share of accolades, and its grounds are now the venue for a concert given by an international artist in February each year.

The wine industry's rise has also reformed the hospitality sector, which wasn't terribly sophisticated when I was working as a trainee cook for a boutique winery in 1995.

A popular dish on the menu then involved me selecting three scraggly prawns from a bag in the deep freeze, zapping them in the microwave with a nob of garlic butter, and serving them up on an oversized plate with a side salad. Customers were shamelessly charged $15.

Today, eating out in Hawke's Bay is inexpensive, more relaxed and possibly superior to a posh Ponsonby or Parnell restaurant.

Napier has more than 40 restaurants, not counting the winery restaurants, such as Brookfields, Crab Farm and Clearview.

There are wineries by the seaside, or inland vineyard restaurants, such as Sileni Estate, which rises from the landscape like the home of a large religious cult.

While wine and food make good excuses for a visit, Hawke's Bay is a virtual island to other parts of the country.

The region, which is circled by ranges, is a 5 1/2 -hour drive from Auckland and four hours from Wellington.

Flights to Napier are wickedly expensive, unless you're organised enough to book weeks in advance, and the bus ride from Auckland is a gruelling eight hours.

Trains no longer service the region since the Bay Express, a romantic journey from Wellington, up past the Kapiti Coast and the Tararua Ranges, vanished in Tranz Rail's sale of services to the small Victorian company West Coast Railway.

The isolation is a bonus for many locals, who remain fiercely loyal to "the Bay".

It's the kind of place where families in 100 years will still bear the surnames of the farmers who first settled there.

Some Aucklanders wouldn't understand, but most visitors from Hawke's Bay would rather stay at home.

* Libby Middlebrook is a Herald news reporter.