Category: New Zealand, Winter 2020

You can’t  travel to a place known for wine without hitting a few wineries, so we took a ferry from Auckland out to Waiheke Island for a tour with Waiheke Island Wine Tours.

We were lucky enough to get the owner, Wayne, as our driver.  His family has been associated with Waiheke Island since the 1840’s, so he knows the area better than pretty much anybody.  I paid strict attention to his driving, since we are renting a car in two days, and I wanted to visualize driving on the wrong side of the road.  Yikes!  I visualized us dying at least twice!

Wayne took us to 3 wineries, all very different from each other.  The first one was Kennedy Point, which happens to be located at, you guessed it, Kennedy Point.  That’s Wayne on the right.

It’s a beautiful spot on a little peninsula with a pretty bay on each side.  The wines were pretty good, but their Syrah was just ok, which was a bit dissapointing since they unabashedly talked about winning “Best Syrah in the World” in 2009 at the International Wine Challenge in London.  I guess I’ve been spoiled by Paso Robles Syrah (Nicora in particular).  Either that or the Brits have no idea what Syrah is supposed to taste like.  They do drink beer at room temperature after all!

The tasting room is surrounded by 400-500 year old Pohutukawa (say that 3 times fast) trees.  I’m particularly enamored with the 2nd photo, where I was able to get a slice of my finger in the shot….and this is just the first winery of the day!

These trees are also referred to as New Zealand Christmas Trees, since they blossom around Christmas time with bright red bottle brush flowers.  Stock photo below.

We were then off to Casita Miro Vineyard.  We liked nearly all of their wines, but again, nothing was OMG, MUST BUY!  However, the owners visited Barcelona way back when, and loved Antoni Gaudi’s Park Guell so much that they want to replicate it here.

Love it!  I also liked their wine presentation, along with the little bites of food to accompany each wine.  The foccacia bread was so good!  The owners wife makes it herself.

Casita Miro also runs a restaurant, and we came back for lunch after the final winery.  Most of the dishes were good to excellent, with the exception of the paella, which was overcooked and needed some spice.  Amazing to us that the best paella we have ever had was actually in Arles, France, with honorable mention to a food booth at a market in Cadiz, Spain, that only cost 2 euros.

The final winery was Obsidian, where we had the first wine that actually wowed me (a Pinot Gris).  They also had a very nice Rose, but we didn’t buy anything as we are travelling light, and there are more wineries to visit.  Very nice tasting area though, with winery dogs running around…always a good sign!

You get an excellent view of the Auckland skyline on your return trip.

We finished off the night with dinner at Harborside Ocean Bar and Grill, which is housed in the historic Ferry Terminal building.  The food is a little on the pricey side, but it was very good.  The view of the harbor from their patio cannot be beat!

Time for bed…..we are off on another ferry ride first thing tomorrow.

Our plane departed nearly on time, and we were lucky enough to use miles to sit in Business Class.  Here is Kim right before we took off.  She is very happy to have a lay flat seat!

The flight was quite bumpy according to Kim.  I slept right through it, for about 9 of the 13 hours of the flight.  Thankfully, the wine is pouring freely in Business Class!

Going through Customs was strange.  New Zealand has this new NZ Electronic Travel Authority that you need to get before you can enter the country, but nobody asked to see it upon entry? Ok.

We took Uber from the airport, and there are plenty of Uber drivers standing by.  We landed at 0855, and were at our hotel by 0950.  Pretty impressive!  The Uber ride was $50 NZ, about $32 US.  Pretty damn cheap for door to door service!

Of course, arriving that early, our hotel room was not quite ready, so we dropped off our bags and took a walk around.  We walked over to the Ferry Building to scope it out since we are taking ferries the next two days.  It’s a beautiful old building, that is undergoing some reconstruction, like everything else in Auckland!

We then walked up Queen Street, which is home to Prada, Lululemon, Louis Vuitton, and several other characters from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Kim said they were stores, but I saw barely anybody in them, so I have to presume they are fronts for the undead or some such thing….just waiting for you to walk in so they can have their snack! (OK, maybe watching al 3 LOTR movies in 5 days was a bit much).

We had booked lunch at Orbit 360 Dining at the top of the Auckland Skytower.

The restaurant revolves 360 degrees every hour giving you an incredible overview of the city, and the food was actually quite good, almost as good as the views!

We both had the salmon, and a bottle of New Zealand Pinot from Mt. Difficulty, a winery we will be visiting later on this trip.  The Pinot was just ok.

If you visit the restaurant, you also get to go to the Observation Deck for free, which is a pretty good deal since it’s $32 per person just to go to the top.  The Main Observation Level (Level 51) is large, but it was very crowded!  We went up the elevator to the smaller “Sky Deck” area on Level 60 (722 feet high), which is much smaller, but appeared to be quite a bit less crowded.  Highly recommended.  Here is a view looking down towards the waterfront area.

The waterfront, Quay Street in particular, is under serious construction!  Here is a shot from our hotel.  Hopefully the “I’m backing up” Beep Beep Beep stops at a decent hour.  I can also see a pile driver sitting there….hopefully they don’t get that thing going anytime soon!

We hit dinner at an Italian place called Amano, that gets rave reviews.  The food was good, but the place was noisy, and they had really crappy music playing (sounded like somebody taking a sledgehammer to a drum set with a drunk playing piccilo in the background).

We took a nice stroll up Princes Wharf and watched the ferry’s come and go….there are a LOT of ferry boats in Auckland!  We are off on one tomorrow!