It seems its wine-o-clock time again.

Greytown, Mar­tin­bor­ough and Glad­stone are wak­ing up from winter and pre­par­ing for Toast Mar­tin­bor­ough next week­end.  The tick­ets are all sold for this year oth­er than some pack­ages with Rydges if you’re super keen (bear in mind that does mean a sloshy old bus ride over that hill and back…), but there’s anoth­er (maybe bet­ter?) option com­ing soon if you missed out.

The Wair­ar­apa Wines Har­vest Fest­iv­al will be held on 15 March 2014 in the Glad­stone area.  This one is still a bit more in its infancy and is at ‘The Cliffs’ river­side domain so all the offer­ings are con­veni­ently in one place, but still includes some of the Wairarapa’s best wine and food providores, includ­ing some of the new­er Glad­stone offer­ings.  If the music is sim­il­ar to last year’s line-up (recog­nize some of these – Way out West, The Shenanigans, The Noodles, Barry Saun­ders?), then it’s guar­an­teed to pro­duce a lively atmo­sphere and be a fun day out.

Tick­ets on sale 27 Novem­ber.

And in hon­our of ‘wak­ing up from winter’ yours truly and Mr yours truly had a week­end jaunt around the Wair­ar­apa this week­end.  Delight­ful.

Deserving of men­tion in the food and wine stakes were (and apo­lo­gies up front for using Trip Advisor links for some of these smal­ler estab­lish­ments who don’t have their own web­sites, but they’ll give you a taste):

  • The 2012 pinot gris at Mur­doch James in tan­dem with a tasty chick­en liv­er pate, apple jelly and crostini.
  • Murdoch JamesA couple of Salute’s tapas in Greytown – por­cini roas­ted and truffled duck risotto with car­a­mel­ized onions, thyme, green peas and crispy duck quack­ling (yep quack­ling), and crispy fried lamb with warm chick­pea pur­ee, almonds, cur­rants, pickled quince and char grilled flat­bread.  Do book as they get really busy.
  • The Greytown Main Street Deli’s famed pies – a wild boar and a beef and bur­gundy one came along home with us, as did a few deli­cious-look­ing deli good­ies (purely for Christ­mas gifts you under­stand).
  • Everest cix saladThe Greytown French Baker’s almond crois­sant – crispy flakey lay­ers of deli­cious­ness and not over-almon­ded.
  • An asi­an-style ter­iyaki chick­en salad at Everest Café in Feath­er­ston – del­ic­ate and fla­vour­ful honey ginger chick­en on fresh and crispy cab­bage, radish, sprouts and cherry toma­toes.  These guys also bake all their own breads and pastries, as well as stock­ing Killinchy Gold ice creams for afters (liquorice and black cur­rant any­one?).  And in waffle cones (no self-respect­ing decent ice cream should be seen dead in any­thing less in my book).  And okay, I con­fess.  An orange and white chocol­ate bri­oche fell into my bag too.

Boy there’s a lot of deli­cious­ness right on our door­step when we find our way out of the city.