Party time ... the Taste of Martinborough festival.
Wellington's food scene has put it on the map, and it likes a drink to celebrate, writes Sarah Maguire.
Balmy spring days don't get better than this. I'm sitting in sunshine between the rows of vines at Winslow Wines in the North Island town of Martinborough, listening to the hum of hundreds of people enjoying themselves. I'm full of whitebait fritters and beef burgers with blue cheese, and the barrique fermented chardonnay is a toasty drop. And by this stage of the day, although the finer points of barrique methods are beyond me, I've become used to drinking from a glass attached to a shoelace hanging around my neck.
That's how they do it at the annual Toast Martinborough festival in the Wairarapa region north of Wellington: your tasting glass is your ticket into the 10 vineyards taking part in this one-day winery crawl. "We're the knot police," say festival workers as they check your shoelace is knotted securely. "Guard your glass at all times," warn the signs. Ergo, lose your glass and it's all over – which would be a great shame. This is one popular festival. Billed as a celebration of wine, food and music, the 10,000 tickets sell out within minutes.
For serious wine lovers, it's a chance to taste new season drops from the area's renowned boutique producers, whose major crop is pinot noir, followed by sauvignon blanc. However, even though the official guide comes with empty pages down the back in which to write your own tasting notes, I never see anyone actually doing that. What is far more in evidence is thousands of New Zealanders getting slowly sozzled. According to the festival stats, they drink almost a litre of wine each. No wonder there are people wandering around wearing giant plastic breasts.
Our food and wine odyssey began two days earlier in Wellington, a one-hour drive away over the precipitous Rimutaka range. Wellington in the past has had the reputation of a backwater, but these days New Zealand's capital is quite the funky town and a foodie show-off to boot: it claims to have more cafes and restaurants per capita than New York. In two days spent sampling a selection of them, it's obvious Wellington has the goods. The food is fresh and inventive, and served in interesting, hip spaces (see box, top right).
This city's love affair with life's finer things is putting it on the map. For three consecutive years, Wellington eateries have been the "supreme winners" in New Zealand Cuisine magazine's Restaurant of the Year competition. The inaugural Wellington on a Plate food festival wrapped up three weeks ago with organisers reportedly stunned at its success. The local Cafe Culture magazine claims the little city is known the world over for great coffee.
Zest food tours take visitors to the heart of the culinary action and it is on their Capital Tastes tour that we discover how the people in these parts have even taken chocolate to a whole new level.
To witness the relationship Wellington has with food, grocer Moore Wilson Fresh is a good place to start. This is where the city's chefs and foodies come to shop, and as food goes, it's quite a spectacle: live clams and mussels stacked under a sprinkler system; live crayfish for $NZ80 ($65) a kilogram; Alaskan king crabs, "as seen in the TV documentary Deadliest Catch"; so much bread in the bakery that it's jammed against the glass of the display cabinets.
This is where you come for goat shoulder and rabbit legs. The variety of meat in all its cuts is huge (it's vacuum-packed, we're told, because of a dearth of butchers in Wellington), as is the line-up of New Zealand-made cheese. The Kiwis are clearly obsessed with the curd. I've never seen so much of it. Of the astounding selection, we get to taste Whitestone double cream brie hand-made in Oamaru, tangy Zany Zeus mint feta and Moore Wilson's own Linkwater cheddar, aged for at least three years.
Later, at Schoc Chocolate Therapy, we get stuck into the sweet stuff. The Saturday morning walk to get there has taken us past a sausage sizzle outside a motorcycle shop; the Capitol Restaurant, where a pavement blackboard menu teases the passing hungry with the promise of fried haloumi in a cucumber mint and lemon salsa; the Kura Gallery, where we pop in to sample dark, deep, delicious manuka honey; and the Pandoro Panetteria, where customers are filing out with paper bags full of the breads and pastries hand-made daily in the Italian bakery.
Once at Schoc, we're subjected to a taste test, the aim being to match five different chocolates with 60 possible flavours.
"Let it sit at the front of your mouth for a while before letting it go to the back," we're instructed.
I correctly guess the coffee walnut, sea salt and lime chilli, but what I think is rose is in fact geranium, and I mistake sweet basil for pink peppercorn. The flavours aren't the only unusual thing going on here: the folks behind Schoc believe chocolate, quite seriously, is a key to self-exploration. If you like an orange centre, you're a cool head in emergency situations; a marshmallow centre and you're very social. Pecan lovers are on a quest for eternal youth, almond lovers desire success. And so on.
If you love a coffee centre (you're not one to be kept waiting), your patience will be tested at Toast Martinborough, where queues inevitably form for the food and wine on offer.
As well as its vintages, each vineyard features a menu created by leading restaurants in Wellington and the Wairarapa. It gets fancy: Penne Pasta with Duck Confit and Pancetta Lardons at Winslow Wines, for instance, and leek, thyme and feta galettes at Ata Rangi.
As the day wears on, you suspect this is a crowd that would rather chow down on simpler fare: like the Thai fish cakes and lamb souvlaki at Palliser.
One of the reasons Toast works so well is that all the vineyards are in the township. Many are walking distance from each other; otherwise there are shuttles in continous operation.
Live bands perform at each vineyard, helping to determine what sort of crowd you'll find settled in. At Tirohana, cover band Livewire have seen younger days, as have their songs (think Pink Floyd and the Eagles) and their audience.
In contrast, the vibe at Craggy Range is total rock concert, including a police presence. The main act here is Rhombus, a band singing its own blend of hip-hop, soul, funk and reggae. The six-deep queue to the bar is essentially a mosh pit, and one wonders how deeply the roast portobello mushroom crostini, with rocket, pine nuts and parmesan, is being appreciated.
But we know how Kiwis love to party because it's pretty much the same way Australians do.
Take three Wellington restaurants
Duke Carvell's Emporium, in a laneway off the bohemian Cuba Street, features Mediterranean-inspired tapas, with the most expensive item on the dinner menu a lemon- and sumac-crusted fish at $NZ15 ($12). We swooned over drunken beef-shin casserole with salted lemons and flowering oregano and seared calamari salad with shaved parmesan and dates, among other morsels of deliciousness.
No. 6 Swan Lane, phone +64 4 385 2240, see dukecarvells.co.nz.
Floriditas prides itself on simple, seasonal food, and its premises, too, are left to speak for themselves: the old grocer's store is all polished concrete floors, white-tiled walls and original ceilings and windows. My dinner was a chargrilled rib-eye with asparagus and parmesan butter, dessert a masala custard-filled doughnut, or bombolini, which owner Marc Weir tells us he spent five years perfecting. And it tastes like it.
161 Cuba Street, phone +64 4 381 2212, see www.floriditas.co.nz.
Martin Bosley's is in a prime location: on Wellington Harbour in the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club. With a credo that's starting to sound familiar, chef Bosley uses fresh, local, seasonal food to create dishes as simple as sashimi and as complex as carpaccio of big-eye tuna with frozen cucumber foam and farmed French caviar. We have a degustation "coastal cuisine" menu, $NZ100 a head or $NZ170 with wine, with flavour and texture combinations that include asparagus and orange sponge, crab bisque and lime mascarpone and oyster and tea powder.
103 Oriental Parade, phone +64 4 920 8302, see martin-bosley.com.
TRIP NOTES
GETTING THERE
Air New Zealand flies daily from Sydney to Wellington, see airnz.com.au.
WHERE TO STAY
Wellington: The four-star Copthorne Hotel Wellington, Oriental Bay, has rooms from $NZ160 ($130). 100 Oriental Parade, phone +64 4 385 0279, see millenniumhotels.co.nz.
Martinborough: Wharekauhau Country Estate is a lodge set on a sheep farm. Cottages start at $NZ610 a person a night, twin share, and include breakfast, dinner, drinks and canapes. Western Lake Road, RD3 Featherston, phone +64 6 307 7581, see wharekauhau.co.nz.
THE FESTIVAL
Toast Martinborough takes place this year on Sunday, November 15. See toastmartinborough.co.nz. Tickets are $NZ60. An allocation for Australians is on sale until September 25. To purchase, email info@toastmartinborough.co.nz with "Australia ticket allocation" in the email subject line.
FOOD TOURS
Zest operates small-group gourmet food tours in Wellington and Wairarapa. Prices start at $NZ159 a head for the 2-hour Capital Tastes walking tour. Phone +64 4 801 9198, see zestfoodtours.co.nz.
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