I had e-mailed my friend Marcus whom I had worked with at Deerhurst about 6 years ago whom I remembered had been on this side of the world for the last year or so. It turned out that he has been managing a gourmet pizza bar for the last 13 months in Christchurch, New Zealand. After e-mailing back and forward, we arranged to hang out for the afternoon while I was docked in Lyttleton (about 20 minutes from Christchurch).
I had requested the afternoon off and my supervisor gave me about 5 hours to have in the afternoon. Marcus met me at the information center in Lyttleton and he had borrowed a car from his roommate for us to use for the afternoon. It was awesome to see him again after about 3 years of not hanging out!
Our first stop was to his restaurant, Cocopelli’s , which is a nice patio and bar restaurant. We had a quick pint of a local beer and then off to Waipara Wine Country. Waipara is one of New Zealand’s newest and rapidly growing wine areas. They specialize in white wines, especially Riesling so as you can imagine I was in heaven! The wineries in Waipara are nestled in a valley surrounded by the Teviotdale hills and open to warm winds making it ideal growing conditions. Waipara was located about 1 hour away from where we docked.
Our first stop was Mut Hut Winery to which we did a speed tasting of about 10 different wines. The neat thing about this winery was they had us taste wines that were made with grapes from Waipara and then a wine made with the same varietal but grown in Marlboro. It was really neat to see the difference in the wines just from the different regions. This winery was a bit larger and had a small café overlooking the vineyard.
The next stop was Torlesse Winery which was a small quaint winery. We did a tasting of about 5 different white wines, a wine similar to icewine (which they called Sticky Riesling) and two different sparkling wine coolers. Wine coolers are not as popular as in Canada and this is one of the only wineries that make them. I was surprised at how nice they actually were and had to get a few “Savvy Pops” to bring back to the ship. I also couldn’t leave without purchasing a bottle of Riesling which I fell in love with. I considered sending a case home but I think my mom would finish them off before I got home. :)
By the time we finished with these two wineries we both were ready for a bite and we were getting short for time so we heading back to Marcus’ restaurant for a pizza. We had one of the best pizza’s I have ever had with chicken, sundried tomato, brie, spring onions, sweet chili sauce and roasted pistachio sour cream. Pure heaven!
By that time, I had to get back to work so we rushed me back to the bus station to get back onboard but what an amazing afternoon, catching up with a old friend, great wine and food.
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