Pickles and Port or Pickled? in Wellington

admin | 26/07/2010

The last week has just been incredible. My darling husband had a weekend planned in Wellington with his job and suggested I fly down here for the weekend to catch up with friends and stay in the hotel. What a great idea so of course jumped at the opportunity and booked my flights. Alas only a week ago we discovered his customer is actually based in Mt Wellington not Wellington! so I have been here staying with friends for the last week and have been completely spoilt.

We have had one day of bad weather the rest of the weekend and start of this week has been nothing but glorious weather. Yes it is cold in the sir but the sun has been shining and it has been most pleasant. I was also lucky to be here during the NZ International Film festival and we have been watching some really funky and wierd sub titled movies which has been awesome. I was also taken to the Wairarapa over the Rimutaka mountain range… Wine country with a splash of olives and the best Port I have had in ages.

I met some amazing people and shopped in the funkiest shops and thought to share these with you.

We first went to the Olivo farm and met John and Helen there who have a fantastic olive grove carefully gaurded by their very friendly Beagle, Sophie. Helen also has an amazing veggie garden which has inspired me to turn my garden into an edible garden when I get home. They have the most amazing olive oil and I learnt that olive oil is graded by how many times they press the same olives. Extra Virgin being the first press, Virgin being the second press, plain olive oil being the third press and cooking olive oil being the last press. You’d be hard pressed to get anymore out of those olives

I also learnt that artichokes can be steamed and eaten, they should be eaten before flowering and they self seed as well as being easy to split and replant. Can’t wait to plant these! I also got my first taste of mustard plant which burns the back of the nose like Wasabi. And that I have to plant Sorrel which is a replacement for lettuce in a salad and has a very light and interesting flavour. I also learnt that my current spring onions porbably need to be split out and that I absolutely need to plant some olive trees to make my own marinated olives. Probably the best olives I have eaten in a long time is the Olivo desert olive. Sweet like jam they can be eaten with ice cream or sweeten a blue cheese platter, amazing! never eaten sweet olives before. I can highly recommend the Porcini infused olive oil is the one to try www.olivo.co.nz to try some of their recipes

We also went to Murilea Rise and met a crazy chap Sean that bottles his own Port and OMG you can drink a whole bottle and have no hangover! or so I heard through the grape vine

He also has bottled PMS! who knew that was possible, but he only uses it at a mixture of 10% so that’s porbably why there’s no hangover we all know any more than that and it’s all over. I can highly recommend this Port, I particularly like dthe Apres Blanc or as he aptly suggested the white one. Amazing and goes down a real treat with desert olives!

The shopping in Martinborough is also very cool, I found two things I love. Peonies shop which has the funkiest craziest stuff you’ve seen and lots of wicked jewellery a definite must see, I bought this brooch for my hat to stop it from hanging in my eyes. I also loved this Graffiti art on canvas very wicked.