Winetasting and wildlife in Hawkes Bay

The Veronica Sunbay in Napier, with Cape Kidnappers in the distance. Photo / Jill Worrall

Gimblett Gravels - the name has a rather Dickensian ring about it, unless you are a wine buff or you are being set on the path to becoming one on a Hawkes Bay wine tour.

Far from being a grim Victorian quarry, they are in fact one of the Bay's premier grape-growing areas.

The Gravels is an area of unique soils featuring a varying depth of river silt overlying deep free-draining gravel. This, combined with an especially hot, dry climate, produces a terroir (as the French and those of us who become experts after two glasses of pinot like to call it) that produces award-winning wines.

I sipped my first one on site at Matariki Wines, supervised by tour guide and driver Vince Picone, with Trevor from the vineyard presiding over the tasting.

Up until the 1980s this land was considered virtually useless, now its wines win gold medals and are sent around the world.

As the composition of the soil changes subtly across the vineyard's 60 hectares, so too do the grape varieties - from merlots on the more gravelled land, to late harvest dessert wines on the deeper silts.

Down the road at Bridge Pa, the land now covered in vines once pounded to the hoofbeats of the Ngatarawa racing stables.

It was converted to wine producing by the local Glazebrook farming dynasty and the Corbans, whose forebears had emigrated from Lebanon to New Zealand in 1891.

The horses might be gone, but the memory lingers on because the historic stables, built in 1890, have been painstakingly converted to become the vineyard's centrepiece.

The wines are, of course, impressive but there's double the pleasure in being able to sit in the former stable courtyard overlooking the lily pond while you work through the tasting notes.

Locally produced olive oil, dukkah and vinaigrettes were on the menu at Salvare Estate. I know I should have been concentrating on the wines, but there had to be merit in improving my oil palate as well. And anyway, a number of the men on tour were equally distracted by the rare 50-year-old Morris Oxford Traveller parked outside.

Cheeses, homemade pesto and freshly-baked bread were set out for us at our last stop at Moana Park. I'd been relatively abstemious during the afternoon but the fact that I've lost my notes from this vineyard suggests maybe not careful enough.

But the patient young winemaker battled on as we foraged among the local produce. He had a degree in viticulture - several of the group thought they might have been keener to pursue tertiary studies if this had been on offer at the time. It did seem rather more enticing than say physics or accounting, but then maybe that was the wine talking.

Next morning, and remarkably clear-headed (maybe pesto has hitherto unexplored properties as a hangover cure), we set off briskly along the new walkway that runs beside the sea on Napier's Marine Parade.

The sun was shining on Cape Kidnappers to the south, the ocean was grumbling among the shingle beach, and a man was putting up new signs declaring the area was for dogs on leads only. Three dogs, leadless, gambolled past him.

We stopped at the National Aquarium of New Zealand and were surprised to find not only rather a lot of fish - as one might have expected - but Izzy the crocodile, kiwi and several tuatara.

I could have watched the two tanks of sea horses for hours but a diver was about to feed the residents of the oceanarium.

We stood in the tunnel while above us a seven-gill shark, sting rays and a flotilla of other fish found in New Zealand waters circled a diver.

It was the sting rays who were the most captivating - wings beating, they just about enveloped the diver as they moved in for the food.

Schools of terakihi, snapper, kahawai and hapuka drifted overhead.

This aquarium holds the largest collection of aquatic life in New Zealand but it's an example of quality not just quantity.

There's a great staff too - friendly and enthusiastic.

I'd be proud to take overseas visitors here and I can't say that about all our so-called tourist attractions.

- Jill Worrall


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Pictured above: The Veronica Sunbay in Napier, with Cape Kidnappers in the distance. Photo / Jill Worrall