Eat, drink, cycle
COMFY seats, high handlebars and a front basket for carrying one’s stuff – bottles of wine, for instance – make travelling on a March Hare bicycle perfect for the Martinborough wine trail.
It’s been a while since I’ve ridden a bike and within 50 metres, through gear-changing ineptness, I disengage the chain from the sprockets.
Sam, my man, sorts out the chain, gives me a lecture on gearing and lowers my bicycle seat to a more suitable position.
Martinborough, besides being a cute little heritage town in the Wairarapa, is flat, has straight roads that prong out from the central square and 14 wineries within a few kilometres.
The first stop is Palliser Estate Wines.
We park the bikes near the white-rose garden and walk past an Italian fountain to the cellar door. We sniff, swirl and taste; the riesling is heavenly and Sam loves the pinot noir.
We cycle along a gravel lane through vineyards and, by this time, my bicycle and I are becoming friends. Cycling adds to the joy of the blue day, giving a feeling of being there, in the landscape, rather than passing through it.
The lane joins the seal at New York Street, a sweetly incongruous name in this low, green, rural area. It was named in 1881 when a settler of note, John Martin, designed the town in the pattern of the Union Jack, with a large central square and streets radiating, like the stripes on the flag, out from the middle. This immodest and well-travelled man named the town after himself, and the streets after places he had visited hence Dublin, New York, Cologne and Texas Streets.
Birds are singing, totally ignoring the gas guns that periodically boom to keep them off the grapes, and we peddle along flat back roads with only an occasional tractor, farm bike or car to watch for.
The afternoon disappears in a haze of wineries; Vynefields, Ata Rangi, Te Kairanga and more. Sam tastes and, mostly, I go along for the ride, drinking in the scenery – big sky, distant mountains, eons of space and grapevines, many elegantly shrouded in white bird-deterring gossamer, marching into the distance.
The last stop is at Olivo. Sacrilege to say but we are almost over wine.
Extra virgin olive oil, with its fresh fragrance and fruity rich flavour, is a stomach-settling delight and the difference between this and that which comes from Italy or Spain is an ambrosial half-world away.
Olivo has 1400 trees, each one producing up to 25 kilograms of olives. It takes 8kg of olives to produce a litre of extra virgin oil. John Meehan, co-owner with his wife Helen, says their oil, which has won numerous awards, is so good because Wairarapa’s soil and cool climate is perfect for producing high-quality olive oil just as it produces superb wine.
Then it’s a cycling stretch back to Martinborough, along pretty country roads and through the back of town where big, old villas bask in quarter-acre sections, with large vegetable gardens and trees tall enough to have swings.
Now my bike and I are one and I zoom along as if I cycle every day. Blue sky, warm sun, country lanes and the smell of ripe grapes; it’s not the wine talking but there is no nicer way to do a tasting tour than this.