On the last day of our short trip up to Hawke’s Bay, we went over to Elephant Hill winery. Founded in 2003, the proprietors Reydan and Roger Weiss, apparently fell in love with the region after visiting in 2001 – well, I don’t blame them at all!. Hawke’s Bay is one of New Zealand’s warmest region, and with high sunshine hours and low rain fall it is well suited to growing wine grapes. Elephant Hill has three vineyards in Hawke’s Bay: the coastal Te Awanga Vineyard which we visited, the inland Gimblett Vineyard in the Gimblett Gravels Winegrowers District and The Triangle Vineyard in the Bridge Pa Triangle region.
The featured image at the top of the post shows the drive up to the restaurant and tasting room. Below you can see the elephant outside the building – why an elephant? Well, I read somewhere that the name Elephant Hill came from the owners’ love of that animal, but I am not completely sure.
There are fantastic views from the restaurant over to the ocean, though the picture below is more of the rolling countryside. It was such a lovely place to sit, enjoy the wine and relax over lunch.
We chose a glass of Elephant Hill’s Hieronymous 2017, as we thought it was a good opportunity to try something a bit special. We were not disappointed with this rich tasting wine with overtones of blackberry – something I love in a red wine.
Lunch was a grazing platter from Mio Catering. We had the Terra Firma Platter, which had all sorts of good things from a pork, venison and duck terrine to a wonderful chicken liver pate to Craggy Range sheep blue cheese to a red pepper dip and lots of other good things as you can see below.
It was a bit of a cloudy day, but a perfect way to spend part of our last day up in Hawke’s Bay. You can see the region in the sun in previous posts here, here and here.
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A closer look at that elephant suggests it is an Asian elephant – not hard to guess really from the decorations and the clothing worn by the riders 🙂 This certainly looks like a splendid place to visit.
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Yes it does appear to be an Asian elephant! It was a lovely place to visit.
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Looks like a beautiful place and a wonderful time. I love elephants. My sister gave me a beautiful silver elephant pendant for Christmas.
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Stunning!
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We visited Napier last year. We were in Greymouth last weekend, judging by the airlines and airports alot of other people have had the same idea about getting away, there were loads of them.
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We love Hawke’s Bay – our fourth visit since we move here (and I have had quite a few work trips).
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Didn’t seem to be crowds of people there? Did you see crowds at all over your vacation away?
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No – the beaches were busy, but not at all crowded. We have friends down in Wanaka at the moment and it is really quiet – not at all like the time we stopped for a coffee there a few years ago!
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