When we were up in Napier at the weekend, we felt we had to take the chance to sample some of the wines of the region. We were familiar with Mission Estate and some others in the region and were eager to try some more. So on Saturday afternoon we joined a tour with Grape Escape that took us to four wineries in the area.
We started at Sileni Estates, a big wine producer that exports all over the world. We tasted six wines there, including a sparkling pinot gris.
From there we drove to Ash Ridge Wines, a boutique vineyard, producing wine only available at the cellar door or by mail order. The wines here were all excellent, but we particularly enjoyed the Chardonnay, and bought a bottle to keep to enjoy with a friend who will be visiting us in a couple of weeks.
Our next stop was Ngatarawa Wines (as featured in the last post). Here we sampled a number of wines and purchased a bottle of merlot, some of which we sampled with cheese and biscuits, supplied at just the right point in the tour.
The final stop was Ash Ridge Wines (also the featured picture). We particularly enjoyed the syrah here, as well as the lovely setting.
Verdict on the afternoon: a lot of wine was tasted and some cheese was eaten.
NB: blog post over the next few weeks are going to be a bit erratic, due to work travel. Stick with me!
They’ve got lots of great wines up there 🙂
They do!