Finding Ithaka

August 3, 2015

My New Zealand series continues! While we were staying in Queenstown, one of the day trips Nick and I took was out to a bunch of wineries in Central Otago. We love our red wine, and Central Otago is known for its pinot noir. A day full of food and pinot noir sounded pretty awesome to me.

We hired a driver so that we could drink all. of. the. wine. This always kind of seemed like a waste of money to me – hiring a driver just to go wine tasting. But we decided to try it out on our honeymoon, and I realized what an awesome luxury it was. Our driver knew all of the best wineries to go to, so we didn’t have to do any planning or research. He also knew all of the people at all of the wineries so I felt like we got a really personal, hands-on experience. He organized the entire day – wine tastings, lunch, tours, and then more food. And of course, the best part was that we didn’t have to drive! It was a full day of wine, food, and gorgeous scenic views. I think that having someone take us around was absolutely worth the money because it made the day just so much more relaxing. There were 4 other people on the tour with us, which I thought made the whole experience even more fun.

One of our first stops was to Gibbston Valley Vineyard, New Zealand’s only wine cave! We got to take a tour and taste their wine right out of the barrels.

After a few wineries, we went to Amisfield Bistro to taste their wines and have lunch. We had just been there for dinner the night before, but I loved their food so much and I was really excited to go back!

After, we went to a few more wineries.

Our last stop of the day was to Waitiri Creek Wines – their tasting room is inside an old church! The owners moved the entire church and renovated it before opening it up to tastings. We had a lot of fun just drinking wine and hanging out with the other people on our tour.

It was a gorgeous, fun, and relaxing day in Central Otago! We booked our tour with Odyssey NZ and everything went great – I definitely recommend them!

As gorgeous as Central Otago was, I loved our wine tour in Wahieke Island so much more. Don’t get me wrong – I really enjoyed our day, and I think that Central Otago is gorgeous and the wineries are worth going to. But for me, next time I am in New Zealand, I will go straight to Wahieke Island. Wahieke Island was such a quaint, cute little island, with nothing around but wineries and restaurants. Check out my full post about Wahieke Island here!