Wine and dine in the sunshine
Small is beautiful when it comes to boutique wine celebrations, and a party in a paddock can become something quite special, writes Ewan Sargent.
‘‘It is quintessentially a New Zealand party. It’s at the end of the summer. It is very unpretentious, it is very relaxed and it is in a spectacular rural setting.
Food and wine are the big talking points when it comes to boutique festivals. But surely the setting is the real star. Here’s an easy test to prove it. Imagine the same food, drink, music, and tents in an empty concrete car park building in the middle of a city.
It would be something . . . but massively inferior to being under the old oak trees of the Glenmark Domain in Waipara, or under ancient to¯ tara on the Ruama¯ hanga River’s bank at the end of Dakins Rd in Northern Wairarapa.
These sites host two of the country’s most intensely local wine and food festivals over March 9 and 10.
New Zealanders are demanding more information about where our food and drink comes from. That’s a big driver in dining out and, increasingly, for supermarket shoppers.
Boutique wine and food festivals are the ultimate way to experience this.
They are a chance to eat and drink at the place where the wine and food comes from – and alongside the people who grew and made it.
Wairarapa’s party is on Saturday, March 9, and Waipara’s is on Sunday, March 10.
Wairarapa Wines Harvest Festival organiser Liz Pollock says tickets for this year’s festival went on sale online in November. The last of the 2300 $57 tickets disappeared in nine minutes.
Pollock, who helped launch it 13 years ago, says more tickets could easily be sold, but she thinks that would ruin it.
Pollock believes its smallness and intimacy is one of its big drawcards.
The festival was created to help local winegrowers showcase their wines. The numbers are much the same as they have always been and Pollock says the basic formula has remained largely unchanged.
While the setting near vineyards and the river and old to¯ tara trees is memorable, other things also click.
‘‘It is quintessentially a New Zealand party. It’s at the end of the summer. It is very unpretentious, it is very relaxed and it is in a spectacular rural setting. I think that really appeals to people,’’ she says. Liz Pollock
Wairarapa Wines Harvest Festival
The ‘‘sell-out’’ formula has the crowd milling around eight sites under the trees, with two wineries and a restaurant at each site.
Four bands play over the day, starting with jazz, and a covers band ends the day to match the mood change when the urge to dance has swept aside the urge to look fabulous and to ignore dried cowpats.
But she says the music is always background music.
Pollock says 45 per cent of ticket sales go to Wairarapa people. Wellingtonians grab the other 45 per cent, and the final 10 per cent is made up of outsiders from such places as Auckland, and even a group of 20 from Sydney this year.
All restaurants are encouraged to use local ingredients, so things like rabbit pie, goat’s meat skewers, cod and crayfish cakes, and wild pork terrines are the kind of food that pop up.
The festival is held at Gladstone, a wine-making area between Masterton and Martinborough.
Meanwhile, North Canterbury fills the same role for Christchurch.
The North Canterbury Wine and Food Festival organiser, Jo Blair, says this year’s maximum is about a 3500 people – up 500 from last year – and three-quarters of the festival’s tickets have already sold.
While the Gladstone event has succeeded from a consistent formula, the North Canterbury festival has been building and evolving over the past three years.
Blair thinks it may max out at 5000 people one day, but there’s no hurry to get there.
She says it is essential that it remains ‘‘cool’’ and intimate and for people who are really into enjoying the wine and food of North Canterbury and meeting the people.
It’s not about an afternoon getting drunk. That’s uncool, she says.
It has a long history, going back to when it was all about being a bit of a bash for the local wineries.
Once it was called the Waipara Wine Festival, then the Waipara Wine and Food Festival in a nod to local food, and now it’s the North Canterbury Wine and Food Festival – in a nod to the new wine region’s status and how it encompasses a much bigger area than just Waipara.
Blair says that 75 per cent of festival goers come from Christchurch to enjoy a wine region on their doorstep, which is emerging on the world stage.
About 30 wineries will be represented, backed by 60 other stalls.
‘‘This year, we have heaps more stuff. We’ve tried to go up a level. After last year we