Wellington and Marlborough

In Wellington we participated in a food tour and gourmet lunch with chef Shaun Clouston, co-owner and executive chef at Logan Brown. It is one of the premier restaurants in Wellington, and Shaun, besides being an amazing chef, is very personable and a great foodie tour guide.

We started off with a trip to a family-owned grocery, Moore Wilson. It is like Longo’s at home, but with only one very large location as well as a Costco-like wholesaler side and a Wine and Spirits Shop. There are two other big pluses to this store: they feature fresh, sustainable foods and they work with a number of local small producers, like fishmongers, bakers, and butchers, and sell their products in the store. The bakery that provides the French-style baguettes will come to replenish stock multiple times a day, and Moana New Zealand, which sells the fresh fish, closes for the day when they run out. We couldn’t resist buying a couple of small bottles of infused extra virgin olive oil to bring home, once Shaun gave us the background on the couple who make the oil and the process they use. Watch for the salads and nibblies to come when we get back!

At the entrance to Moore Wilson

This chinese takeaway is permanent, but they also
have food stands with rotating occpancy so
new vendors can 'test the market'.

The fresh baked goods looked particularly appetizing!

After our tour around the market, we headed over to Logan Brown. It is in a former Bank of New Zealand building, with a high ceiling and lots of windows, and an almost round shape with the bar as the focal point. The bar itself is unique in that there’s a sort of aquarium of small local sealife as part of the bar top.

The restaurant

The interior is gorgeous

The little aquarium bar-top. Small mussels....

...and a crayfish, otherwise known as a Spiny Rock Lobster. This
guy will be put back out to sea when he gets too big for the
restaurant.

Our host, Shaun Clouston, in what might
be his 'Iron Chef New Zealand' pose, if they
had such a thing.

Our visit started off with a fresh-made cocktail that had been devised by Logan Brown’s mixologist just for our group. Not only did she infuse the gin she used as the base, she also made up little smoke-bouquets from aromatics, and infused the glasses with the smoke before she made the drinks. That was really inventive and did give the drink a smoky component all the way to the bottom.

The rest of the lunch was fantastic! Six courses, paired with wine if desired, showcasing local New Zealand produce, meat and seafoods. We could wax rapturous over each one, but we’ll just put in the photos and descriptions below:

Albacore tuna with native herbs and black lime

Paua, a type of mushroom, in ravioli and poached

Hapuka, a delicious local New Zealand fish

Crayfish sandwich with truffle slices

Lamb loin, smoked ricotta fritter and a rabbit ragout ravioli

Poached white peach with a little meringue on the side

Chocolate 'cremeux', chocolate mousse covered
in dark chocolate with berries on the side
and a sugared hazelnut on top.

Needless to say, dinner, if we had any (it was so long ago we can’t remember) was a bowl of soup and some cheese and crackers at the Bistro. That’s become our go-to for a light meal when we’ve had a large lunch…so far it seems to be working.

The next day we had a beautiful early morning sail in to Picton, just across the Cook Strait from Wellington on the South Island, at the end of the Queen Charlotte Sound. We sailed the Sound for a couple of hours, very peaceful and quiet.

The sun had just risen when Monica got outside
with her camera.

Beside the dock at Picton

We were touring into the wine country of Marlborough, to visit first a private garden, and then a couple of wineries, one being the winery that put New Zealand on the global map, Cloudy Bay.

The Upton Oaks Garden is on New Zealand’s list of Gardens to Visit, and was developed by the owners, Dave and Sue Monahan, into this beautiful formal garden with orchards of peaches, apples, pears and an olive grove on the side. The family’s main business is making furniture, but they do all the garden work themselves.

The house is in the style of the early 1900s
in New Zealand

After a stroll through the gardens and a stop for refreshments, we boarded the bus again and drove on to Cloudy Bay for a wine tasting. As a few of Cloudy Bay’s wines are available at home, we were already familiar with them, but there were some others to try that we hadn’t seen.

The Cellar Door Entrance at Cloudy Bay

The tasting room

Out in the grounds

The hills in the background were the inspiration
for Cloudy Bay's label

After Cloudy Bay, our second stop was Wither Hills. This winery wasn’t all that far away from Cloudy Bay, but we weren’t overly impressed with the wines or the way the tasting was set up for 29 people on the tour.

Back on the bus to Picton, but even though the day was not the most satisfying, we did have the sail back out through Queen Charlotte Sound to make up for it.

Onward to Akaroa, the port for Christchurch on this cruise.