Black Barn Vineyards has rebuilt its bistro, led by Regnar Christensen in the kitchen. Photo / Supplied
Jesse Mulligan spends a weekend living his best life in Hawke’s Bay, where locals are keen to spread the word they’re open for business.
To stand on the eastern slope of the Tukituki valley and look out towards Te Mata Peak is to experience one of New Zealand’s great views — a landscape comparable to Queenstown in that it awakens something emotional in you just to behold it.
For a while it seemed like the only way to see this view was from an outside table at Craggy Range — the winery that took its name from the jagged peaks in the distance.
But in the past few years, neighbouring brand Black Barn Vineyards has snuck into the space, launching The Retreats: a suite of luxury accommodation options along the Tukituki River. Their latest, Te Mānia, is a breathtaking piece of architecture splitting four bedrooms across several buildings, with a private catering kitchen and pinball machine among its many features. It has just opened for bookings.
“The whole industry is grateful to them,” one CEO told me during my recent visit, talking about the Retreats as a whole. “Now we have somewhere to put high-end guests.”
To be honest, I’m more “middle-end” but happily accepted a couple of nights in Poplar 1, a four-bedroom house with swimming pool, spa and tennis court. It’s luxurious enough that leaving was difficult, even to visit restaurants — in fact, one night we opted to pick up pizza from Bambina in town and eat it in front of the fire with a bottle of syrah from the in-house wine cellar. (It wasn’t just any old pizza — it was cooked by Alessandro, my favourite pizza chef in New Zealand, who has now sold his titular restaurant in Havelock North and offers takeout-only from a busy spot in Hastings; the flavours are classic and the bases spectacular.)
But eventually a travel writer has to, you know, travel, and so the next morning I went out to explore my surroundings. For some months, I imagine, New Zealanders will equate Hawke’s Bay with flooding and disaster, and while locals appreciate the sympathy, they’re also keen to spread the word that they’re open for business. You will see yellow-stickered houses and the odd road-coned landslip as you drive around the region but you’ll also be struck by how little has changed in the areas you’re most likely to visit as a tourist.
If you haven’t been to central Hastings recently you’ll have the opposite experience: things really have changed on a main street which is now one of Aotearoa’s lovelier town centres to wander through. Great coffee, fantastic icecream (locally famous Rush Munro’s has a pop-up shop in a shipping container), plus bars, restaurants and some appealing retail offerings make the four city blocks in the centre of town worth a special visit.
Dinner at Cellar 495 was one of the great Saturday nights of my lifetime. A dedicated wine bar of a quality very difficult to find even in a major city, it’s named after clubbable owner Mike Henley, the 495th Master of Wine in the world. He has created a list of wines with one major criterion — he must want to drink it himself in order to serve it in the restaurant. There are dozens of brilliant and exciting wines, officially served by the glass, but Mike is known to regularly open whole bottles for tasting when the mood strikes him.
Meanwhile a very talented young chef named Carlita Campbell runs the food service, offering pretty much a full menu of dinner options, which she cooks and delivers herself, pausing to say hello when she gets a moment but, mostly on a busy night like this, busting back into the kitchen to make the next thing.
We started with oysters and bubbles, moved on to some interesting European whites paired with snacks (the parfait with gluten-free crumpets and plum jam, and potato doughnut spheres on creme fraiche with cured egg yolk, chermoula and anchovy fillets were stand-out) then settled into a glass of Burgundy with an unbelievably good steak tartare. I also got to try a glass of Field of Fire — a one-in-a-million chardonnay from Pyramid Valley, a label Mike used to head up before striking out on his own.
This is all pretty fancy stuff (albeit served with a warm informality) and worth booking ahead for, but Hastings has a lot of offerings you can just rock up to if the mood strikes you. We particularly enjoyed Craft & Social, an upmarket bar and eatery with a solid menu of refined pub food and a great list of drinks — the gin menu is particularly impressive.
After a late night at 495 next door I gravitated towards the fish and chips but, for research purposes, ordered something from the extensive local beer and cider list — Hawke’s Bay is justifiably famous for its wine but increasingly performs well in the “other” drinks category too. (Speaking of which, you should make time for a tasting at Hastings Distillery, a gin bar owned by ex-vintners. Hours are limited but worth working your itinerary around.)
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You’ll need to come up for air at some point and one great option is a bike ride through the district’s extensive network of cycle trails. Coastal Wine Cycles offers bikes for a wide range of ages and abilities, charging just $50 for a full day of biking. That’s more than enough time to cover the hill-free route they suggest, starting with a jaunt alongside the river then stopping, inevitably, for a wine break and lunch platter at Te Awanga, a friendly, picturesque vineyard with excellent service, about equidistant to and from your base.
We tried another form of transport that night — EV Executive Transfers, a new local taxi service that now services the area with beautiful electric vehicles. This will be another tourism game-changer for visitors wanting pre-booked transfers to and from restaurants and vineyards and is recommended for anyone who has ever (you may recognise the voice of experience in this) found themselves standing outside a winery restaurant using starlight to try to read the business card of the old mate taxi driver who dropped you off in his Camry several hours earlier.
Black Barn has rebuilt its bistro after a devastating fire last year and is operating at full strength, led by the amazing Regnar Christensen in the kitchen. Regnar is ex-Ortega in Wellington but I first discovered his wonderful cooking at a random place in Auckland (when he announced he was moving to Hawke’s Bay, I strongly considered moving with him).
The food here is real bistro fare — lots of intense stocks and sauces, and you’ll be as satisfied by a plate of carrots (charred under the grill and served in a carrot sauce, with pumpkin seed dukkah) as you will with one of the meaty mains. I landed somewhere in between, with a skewer of roasted wild mushrooms balanced over an incredible broth which I later discovered was “fermented mushroom vinaigrette”. Like almost everywhere we visited, it is both couple-, group- and family-friendly.
Sunday lunch was at Brave Brewing Co (BBC), a craft brewery and restaurant that could be anywhere in the world. It reminded me a lot of Wurstkuche in Los Angeles — a great vibe, hip staff and great hot dogs if you’re not in the mood for a full meal. I had a fantastic spicy chicken burger with a side of beef-loaded fries. Yes, this was too much food for one man.
Honestly, if you’d asked me five years ago the New Zealand city most likely to have an international quality craft-beer restaurant, Hastings would not have been in my top 10 guesses. But so much of the CBD has changed and so quickly, that BBC doesn’t seem at all out of place. I haven’t even got to artisan sourdough bakery Ya Bon, or late-night party joint Common Room, or (more my scene these days) the very sweet Little Red Bookshop, which has bravely maintained its lease despite the rapid retail transformation happening around it.
One operator told me that the majority of winter bookings are made around February, when the cyclone struck, so they’re midway through a quiet couple of months. It’s a perfect time for an impromptu weekend escape, basing yourself in the beautiful Tukituki valley, and exploring the new Hastings at your own pace, and in your own style.
'I pay the rent on this shop, I pay rates on this shop, and I can’t even play music.'