For the perfect NZ staycation, Martinborough is as cheery as the season. Photo / Mike Heydon, Jet Productions
For the perfect NZ staycation, Martinborough is as cheery as the season. Photo / Mike Heydon, Jet Productions
Summer is so close you can almost smell the suncream. For the perfect NZ staycation, Martinborough is as cheery as the season, writes Anna Sarjeant.
The mark of a good destination is a decent memory or two. The mark of a great destination is an overpowering desire to move there immediately. I find myself daydreaming this way in Martinborough.
Roughly one hour (and a bit) from Wellington, albeit over the rather nauseating Remutaka Range, this town of just 2000-ish people is far removed from the aggressions of Auckland whence I’ve come. Now I’m mulling over a move. Martinborough makes me want to escape the rat race and roll kegs at The Martinborough Hotel.
The Martinborough Hotel is an iconic building of Martinborough. Photo / Supplied
It’s in the clawfoot bath at the latter where I’m making these life-changing decisions. It’s 7am. I feel somewhat Victorian and wonder if I should insist on a bedpan, when in Rome and all that: the Martinborough Hotel dates back to 1882. Not that you can immediately tell due to its modern decor and plush furnishings. The drapes alone are a rich, buttery fabric, spilling from the ceiling to the floor. The only clue to this old dame’s real age lies in the features she cannot hide: hulking cast iron radiators and intermittent creaks that shudder through the pipes. Comforting in their persistence.
The hotel sits centrally on Martinborough’s village square, equally aesthetic for its verdant lawn and flurry of trees. The town was founded in 1879, when John Martin, an affluent local runholder, purchased the land. A well-travelled man, he loosely based the urban planning on the shape of a Union Jack – the square at its centre – and with various roads named after his globetrotting pursuits. I find a charming bijou brewery on Ohio St, an immaculate playground just off Texas.
Martinborough is achingly cool and an absolute pleasure-fest for the retinas.
Photo / Anna Sarjeant
Martinborough is gentrified without being glossy, good looking but not dripping in hipster smarm. As a fellow guest on the same trip remarks, “Even the butcher’s shop is cool”, and it is, albeit not quite as cool as the adjacent cafe with its mural wall of Kiwiana, or the pocket-sized rustic bakery, or the many boutique shops teeming with one-of-a-kind wares. It’s all so achingly cool and an absolute pleasure-fest for the retinas. The sooner I move here the better, I think, while ferociously tapping into Google how to become a pub landlady. As well as cool.
There’s no time to delve into my impending hipness just yet though, there’s wine to be drunk. There are over 60 vineyards at our fingertips; well regarded as some of the best in the country. With scores of cellar doors in a relatively compact area, and a flat one to boot, a memorable weekend in the vines requires little more than a rented pushbike and some pedal power. However, on a day slowly ebbing towards spring, there’s still a nip in the air and it’s by car that we arrive at The Runholder, the brand-new home of Te Kairanga wine, Martinborough Vineyard and Lighthouse Gin; a mere four minutes from The Martinborough Hotel.
A memorable weekend in the vines requires little more than a rented pushbike and some pedal power. Photo / Mike Heydon
The Runholder gleams. A slick, black barn with a flat expanse of vines to her right, offset by the tumbling Martinborough Terrace to her left: a mix of come-hither hills and ramshackle outhouses. A patch of trees in the folds marks the final resting place for some members of John Martin’s family; in eyeshot of the Te Kairanga cottage, John Martin’s former stockman’s cottage and the vineyard’s original cellar door. The land we stand on, once owned by Martin, is now the property of Bill Foley, American businessman and wine mogul. The Foley Family Wine portfolio reaches deep into the heart of tiny Martinborough but the leisurely spirit of The Runholder is pure, unadulterated Aotearoa.
The Runholder is built beside the tumbling Martinborough Terrace. Photo / Anna Sarjeant
Inside, I’m reevaluating my life plan again: I shall live in Martinborough and dabble in interior design, such is the impact of this glorious space. Large and airy, it’s a haven of contemporary design with an enormous tasting area and an open-plan dining room. It’s drenched in an architectural IQ that panders to every need of both employee and patron: an authentic brick pizza oven in the kitchen; noise-absorbing acoustic panels in the ceiling. A brand-new copper still, imported from Germany for Lighthouse Gin, is a focal point, sitting behind a huge glass window, demanding to be admired, but it’s the smaller details such as brick tiles in the tables that I find myself applauding.
The Runholder is a haven of contemporary design which includes an enormous tasting area. Photo / Anna Sarjeant
We lunch. It’s been a week of quick dinners and leftovers so I’m already salivating when the line-caught fish arrives. Whether it was line-caught by the chap sitting next to me, Troy Brambley, or one of his trusty steads, it’s arrived at The Runholder via Tora Collective, a sustainable seafood company with Brambley at the helm, alongside his partner Claire Edwards. Brambley details the company’s ethos: to source seafood off the South Wairarapa Coast that is caught fresh-to-order, rather than in bulk and with excess waste, thus allowing for the freshest, locally sought fish to arrive at our table. Next on the menu is a rack of New Zealand lamb, not yet exported to foreign lands. Thank you, Runholder for keeping NZ’s best flavours on NZ plates.
Large and airy, The Runholder is a haven of contemporary design. Photo / Anna Sarjeant
The menu is impeccably refined. If you’re in the mood for chips, you’ll get a hundred layers of pommes anna fries. If you’re in the mood for pizza, it’s cooked in the wood-fire oven – for no longer than 90 seconds, because that’s the optimum bake time for pizza. Or so says head chef Tim Smith and he should know. An Australian with an almost intimidating resume, his priors include Bali’s esteemed Potato Head and Mudbrick Vineyard on Waiheke Island. Smith has every culinary gizmo at his disposal, from cast iron grills to meat smokers and a fancy red Italian meat slicer. No one could say Bill Foley has shallow pockets.
Line-caught fish with a sustainable ethos at The Runholder. Photo / Anna Sarjeant
Little did we know, while stuffing our faces overhead, that thousands of dollars of wine lie directly beneath our feet. After lunch, we descend the staircase for a behind-the-scenes peek around a thoroughly modern wine cave. The first Te Kairanga vine was planted in 1984, and yet down here in this air-conditioned bunker, with the faint smell of new cement still wafting in between the oak barrels, there’s no escaping the slickness of the operation. Our tour guide is master winemaker, John Kavanagh, a vintner with a magician’s touch - give him a grape and along with his team, he’ll craft it into Te Kairanga’s finest pinot noir, as well as smaller drops of chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, pinot gris and riesling.
Master winemaker John Kavanagh, is a vintner with a magician’s touch. Photo / Anna Sarjeant
It’s at this point I decide I won’t be moving to Martinborough to become a winemaker: too stressful. Even with all the fancy kit, grapes sound temperamental. I’m starting to worry landlady-ing isn’t my bag either, but as we settle in for gin tasting, I’m heartened by the story of Rachel Hall, head distiller for Lighthouse Gin. Hall is the first female head distiller in New Zealand, and originally she didn’t even like gin. Good start, I thought, neither did I. Guests at The Runholder can taste the full fruits of her labour, which also proves to be a labour of love. Hall runs the entire show, from zesting her own citrus fruit to driving the 100km round trip to Wharekauhau to source Remutaka ranges spring water. Pity the fool who presumes a team-of-one means Hall sells a few bottles here and there; gin orders can reach well into the hundreds every week. Hall is somewhat unstoppable.
Rachel Hall is the head distiller for Lighthouse Gin. Photo / Anna Sarjeant
Incidentally, the gig did start at a local farmers’ market previously held at Te Kairanga vineyard. The small batch gin was a big hit and was slowly taken under the large and lucrative wing of the Foley enterprise. The Runholder is the newest home of Lighthouse Gin, having outgrown Martinborough Vineyard, its small distillery and even smaller still. Hence the new copper behemoth now sitting in the reception atrium. It’s German. Well-suited to Hall’s own industrious nature, I imagine.
I like the idea of being Hall’s right-hand woman, but gin maestro is off the cards - it’s clear she doesn’t need one. So it’s pulling pints or broke.
A brand-new copper still, imported from Germany for Lighthouse Gin, is a focal point. Photo / Anna Sarjeant
The following day, before winding our way back to Wellington for our return flight to the Big Smoke, we detour via Greytown. Unfortunately, for this month’s outstanding bills, Greytown’s shopping is an addiction in the making. Who needs heating when there are vintage bikes to be bought? The small boutiques here, of which there are many, are all bringing their A-game to the picturesque high street. I contemplate bankruptcy while eyeing up a luxe, $500 edition of Monopoly; consider baked bean dinners for a month in favour of a new handbag that you crochet yourself. In the end, I settle for a packet of jelly babies from the old-fashioned lolly shop - and a reluctance to leave altogether.
