Still on the Winery Trail

Another largely frustrating morning on the search for wine tasting options in Upper Moutere. We’d picked up a 2020 wine trail publication from the information centre in Nelson on Sunday, but it hasn’t been very helpful. We firstly arrived at Neudorf Estate late morning, and although the cellar door was open, they were not doing tastings. They could, however, sell us half-glasses of any wines we’d like to try! So we picked three and sat out in their very nice garden area – we were the only people in the entire place!
We then tried to find Kahurangi Estate, which according to the brochure provides “a selection of locally-sourced food” as we thought this would be a good place for some lunch. It turns out the winery has been sold and the new label provides neither food nor tastings! By now we were getting hungry, so we turned to option 3, Moutere Hills winery, which has a very nice restaurant. We followed heaps of winery signs to get there (there seemed to be one on each of about 8 corners) and finally reached the winery up a long driveway… only to find it was closed!
By now we were getting REALLY hungry, so we thought sod it – we’ll go back to the wine bar on the wharf at Mapua that we went to yesterday. And had a great time. They have an extensive wine list and do tasting ‘trees’ – which allows you to try up to 5 wines. You’ll see from the pictures that I did the sparkling selection and the chardonnay tree, while Charlie did a selection of reds (he was driving!) We also had a wood-fired pizza. And of course bought a few more bottles to take home!
Tonight’s stopover is another park-over property (POP) owned by an NZMCA member in the Upper Moutere valley. We are parked in a quiet leafy glade surrounded by park-like grounds and birdsong.Read more