Woo. Long time no update here… if you follow my Instagram account, you know that we’ve been traveling pretty extensively lately. Let’s get back to where we were in March in New Zealand. After finishing our freezing trek to Angelus Hut and spending a couple days recovering, we took a ferry back over to the North Island and spent a further week in Wellington mostly relaxing and planning our Japan trip, which was quickly approaching.

With that out of the way, we started our journey back north with a stop in Napier to do some wine tasting. Kay had found the company Bike About Tours, who got us on the road and on the way to wineries in no time.I was pretty excited to be on a tandem bike, which Kay had never ridden before. First stop was Mission Estate Winery, where the wine was OK, but not our favorite on the tour.

We didn’t realize how uh… fast the wine would affect our driving abilities. Biking and wining is hard work!

Church Road was close to Mission, so not a long bike ride. We enjoyed their wines more than Mission, especially this 2014 Syrah.Last on our list was Moana Park, which we nearly didn’t make it to because we actually started our wine tour pretty late in the day and places were closing up shop.

Moana Park focuses on making natural, low-allergen and incidentally vegan wine. Kay and I hadn’t known exactly why wine isn’t vegan, but it has to do with some animal products being used in the process. And unlike those baked goods that are noticeably different without butter and eggs, vegan wine is JUST as tasty as non-vegan wine. The Moana Park wine is lovely, and whenever Kay and I land somewhere after all this traveling, I would love to order some wine from this small winery.If you happen to be in Napier and are looking into a wine tour, I do recommend starting a bit earlier in the day than we did. Beginning only around 2pm meant that with biking, we only had time for three wineries before they closed for the day.

We would just have to practice our wine touring later on this trip, but that wouldn’t be for another five months. After Napier, it was time to head up to Rotorua!