Martinborough

What a great day!!   It was a beautiful day in the mid 70's, no wind, sunny skies, so it was perfect for taking a wine tour in this region.   The trees are starting to turn and the grapes are ripe.  Martinborough is a small area, where only 2% of the total wine production of New Zealand is produced in this region.  It is known for it's Pinot Noir's, and after 5 different vineyards today, I can safely say that the Pinots are great.   Ours is not a large camper van, but we found a cupboard that will conveniently hold 12 bottles of wine.   Pinots, Sauvignon Blanc, and even some Rieslings are now cruising around with us.   That makes for some very relaxing afternoons once we get parked.

Our friends, Carla and Roger, toured New Zealand by camper van a few years back, and they were the first to tell us of these neat places to stay, called Holiday Parks.  All of us are familiar with the typical RV park in the US, where you may be parked 10 ft away from your neighbor on an asphalt slab, with very little amenities.   Not so with Holiday Parks.   They are everywhere, wide spaces, mostly on grass, and are quite nice.   Most simply have an electrical plug in for the camper, so that part is pretty easy to set up.   But they are tailor made for the many travelers across this country that stay in many different formats.   Last night, we had a young couple sleeping in the front seat of their car  in the spot next to us.   Many of the younger kids are backpacking, sleeping in the tent on their back, or driving through with a tent in their trunk.   We have met many German tourists, and surprisingly many have come with their small children for a month long holiday.  Tonight in this Holiday Park in Martinborough, there is a young German couple with their 6 month old baby in the camper next to us.   Really nice people.  Long way to come with a little baby.

The key to all this is that each Holiday park has spotless clean bathrooms, laundry rooms, and the big differentiator, full on kitchens.  These kitchens, along with the bbq grills outside the kitchen,  are the social focal point of each park.    There is no need to pack all your bowls, skillets, etc.   The kitchen has it all.   Just bring your food and wine and join all the other campers each evening who are preparing and eating their food in the common area.    I grilled a steak tonight on their gas grill, while another couple from Canada were cooking their vegetables and lamb on the same grill.   There were two other couples from New Zealand who were on Holiday, enjoying their meal at the picnic table.   Naturally this is a really fun part for me, as I like to engage all these folks to find out who they are, where they are from, and what they have seen in New Zealand.   Lots to talk about.

After dinner, I took all of our dirty dishes back to the kitchen and used their sink to wash all the dishes.   This keeps me from filling my gray water tank in the camper, or using up our fresh water.    Shelley is happy to see me scamper off to the kitchen for whatever, as:

A.  She cooked, so it is the least I can do to clean up
B.  She knows how much I enjoy talking with people.
C.   It gets me the hell out of this tiny space we are sharing.....I'm betting this is THE reason

Shocker here:    Martinborough was established by a guy named Martin.  Who would have thought?   Mr. Martin apparently migrated here from Germany in the mid 1860's, and established this town in a nice neat square pattern surrounding a town square.   The picture of our camper above was taken as we parked in the town square today for lunch and to do some grocery shopping, in between visits to vineyards.   Also on the town square (Pictured above) is the shared bottling factory for all the surrounding vineyards.   They grow the grapes, produce, and age the wines at their vineyards, and then after the proper amount of time to age, transport the final product into town to be bottled.

Mr. Martin traveled quite a bit between 1860 and 1883 when the last street in his town was named.   All the street names were of places he visited around the world.  There is New York street, Cambridge, Strasbourg, Cologne, Dublin, Naples, and Venice street all in nice ever larger squares around town square.  However, criss crossing diagonally through this small town, that is only 8 blocks square, is Texas and Kansas streets.  (The ST refers to street, not Kansas State.  Sorry you Wildcats)

   Naturally we had to find the answer to this mystery.    Remember Mr. Martin named these streets in the 1860 to 70 timeframe.   After several glasses of wine, and interrogating several of the locals, the only answer we found was that Mr. Martin came to the Central US to check out the cattle industry.   So he was there during the times of the Chisholm Trail days when cattle
were driven from Texas up to Abilene, KS and the railhead.

I guess he was pretty impressed.

We had to laugh however, as we had our morning coffee at the local cafe, being waited on by the cute 20 something young lady.   Shelley asked her, "You have a Texas street right here next to the cafe", in her best Robin Carmichael West Texas accent.   "What is the story?"    The girl responded,
"We do??   I didn't know that!"

"Aaaa...Yea.   Right there.  And Kansas street is one block over, and they are THE ONLY diagonal streets in this entire square well laid out town".    She was stumped.  I choked on my croissant.   Oh well.

Then what are the odds of this:   Several vineyard tasting stops later....we pull into a really nice vineyard called Ata Rangi Vineyards.

      (PS:  This is my new favorite ideal for a house in the country)

They have a beautiful tasting room surrounded by large fields of grapes just ready to be picked (starting this week).  As is typical, there is a nice young lady behind the counter ready to pour us our samples, and she is talking to a customer who arrived just before us, another young lady.   Turns out that the customer is a 30ish girl from Washington DC, who was very distraught from the US election, so much so that she is moving to New Zealand.   She was talking to the other girl about how to get a job and successfully navigate the difficult immigration system of New Zealand.  Go figure, those damned Kiwi's.   Oh the interesting conversation Shelley had with her!!

As you would have it, the girl behind the counter of Ata Rangi pouring our wine was born in Hays KS, moved to a small town near Norton, (which she could not remember the name as she was a baby) then on to Wyoming, where she graduated from high school.   She met a boy from the Willamette Valley in Oregon years later who was from NZ, and the rest is history.   We were there for an hour, drinking their samples, getting really smashed, and throwing out every small town name we could think of in NW Kansas, to see if she could remember the town she lived in.   She never did, but it was a great party.  You gotta love new adventures, and places.   You just never know what and whom you will find, and frankly....it is a small world.

Prairie View....I just know it was Prairie View.    Maybe Oberlin.