Raise a glass in our Burgundy
My parents were supposed to tour France this month. Of course, like many others, their grand 2020 travel plans were scuppered by Covid-19. Last week, their itinerary would have had them travelling around the French Riviera before making their way through the picturesque vineyards and fields of Burgundy.
Instead, they made the decidedly less exotic journey from Dunedin to Wellington, where I live, and we ventured over the hill to the Wairarapa to spend the weekend in Martinborough.
As it turned out, we couldn’t have picked a better alternative.
Over the past 30 years, this tiny town has established itself as the closest thing New Zealand has to a Europeanstyle wine village, with more than 20 vineyards within walking distance of the town centre.
This makes it ideal for a day of winery-hopping. So, after filling up on coffee and pastries in a buzzing little cafe at the edge of the square, we set off down one of the long, vine-bordered roads, discovering boutique cellar doors at the end of each driveway.
We had booked a tasting at Ata Rangi, one of the region’s founding vineyards, which is best known for its pinot noir. As we sat down to sample the tempting array of ruby-red wines, our host Julia talked us through the history of the winery and the region.
She told us the story of Malcolm Abel, a customs officer at Auckland Airport who, in the 1970s, discovered a grape vine cutting hidden inside the boot of a returning passenger. He questioned him, and found the cutting had been taken from a famous vineyard in Burgundy.
He confiscated it, but instead of destroying it, the cunning winemaker put it through quarantine and planted it in his own vineyard in Kumeu.
Later in the decade, a scientific study found the soils and climate of Martinborough were remarkably similar to Burgundy, which caught the attention of dairy farmer Clive Paton. He sold his cows, and decided to plant a vineyard, then got his hands on some of Abel’s cuttings.
To this day, the fabled ‘‘Abel clone’’ – also known as the ‘‘gumboot clone’’ – is at the heart of Ata Rangi’s pinot noir. That means, incredibly, my parents had their Burgundy wine tasting, after all.
We’re a nation of keen travellers, and have always been happy to jump across multiple time zones in search of amazing sights and experiences. But if there’s one silver lining of the pandemic, it’s that we have an opportunity to discover what’s right under our noses.
In fact, when you compare what we have here with other destinations, as Brook Sabin does in this week’s cover story looking at how Auckland stacks up against Sydney, it makes you wonder why we ever bothered with the jet lag.
Sabin reckons our biggest city has even more to offer than its rival across the ditch. But Heart of the City wants to give you the opportunity to decide for yourself, so be sure to enter the ultimate Auckland staycation competition. Head to pages 38-39 to find out more.