In New Zealand's Otago Region, Dynamic Wineries and a Uniquely Kiwi Culinary Scene Await
Elise Hassey
“Hop in, mate,” said Vaughan Mabee, the jovial mohawked executive chef of Amisfield, from inside his silver pickup. We are just outside the precincts of Queenstown, the most famous city in the New Zealand region of Otago, the birthplace of bungee jumping and the self-proclaimed “adventure capital of the world.” “I will show you there is a lot more to this area than leaping off a fucking bridge.”
Mabee inhabits a different Otago from the one sought out annually by two million thrill-seekers—an Otago I'd come eager to experience. Unfurling beyond the bubble of Queenstown, it's a part of New Zealand that remains remarkably untrodden, offering a different set of thrills: dynamic wineries producing supple Pinot Noirs; former gold rush outposts reimagined by bold personalities; a culinary and hospitality landscape defined by a uniquely Kiwi ethos. Mabee, for instance, operates Amisfield as an extension of his most ardent obsessions: hunting, foraging, and evangelizing about the area's natural wonders. Among his most revered dishes is charcuterie made from paradise ducks he's shot, the cured meat reconstructed to resemble taxidermy, complete with the bird's actual wings.
We met in late February, the tail end of the country's summer. Mabee drove first along State Highway 6, passing through the picturesque valleys of two subregions for winemaking: Bannockburn and Gibbston. Then it was up the serpentine curves of Crown Range Road, the highest main artery in the country, where Mabee veered off onto a stretch of gravel and came to a stop. I was confused. In a corner of the world dense with harrowing beauty—flaxen meadows giving way to snowcapped peaks, glaciers abutting rainforests—it seemed he wanted to show me a rare pocket that was not unnervingly scenic.
Then he led me to a thicket of elderberry bushes, plucking a handful of the dark purple orbs. “Eat these,” he commanded. A woodsy tang lit up my taste buds. Across the way were two ancient apple trees. “Now eat these,” he said, tossing a couple of the fruits my way. I realized that Mabee was, in effect, giving me a tour of his pantry. “Bro, this is not some precious farm or orchard,” he said. “This just is.”
Suddenly he began walk-jogging up the road, as if chasing something elusive. When I caught up to him, he was hovering.
“Ah, this here is the bolete, a cousin of the porcini and one of the finest mushrooms on the planet,” Mabee said, marveling at the earthen basilica of its enormous cap. Come fall, the road would be so reliably lined with the fungi that he had already decided to put bolete on the menu. “First of the season,” he said, tugging it loose from the soil.
Later that night while I was dining at Amisfield, a hushed chamber of vaulted ceilings, the gargantuan mushroom arrived at my table as part of a theatrical parade of 25 courses. Plated by Mabee in a kind of terrarium, it appeared less cooked than teleported from its natural habitat on the side of a dusty mountain road, surrounded by golden grass and lichen-covered stones. The entire experience of enjoying something illicitly delicious that I would have otherwise zipped past without notice is perfectly Otago. This land rewards you for slowing down, looking closer, venturing farther.
I'd arrived two days earlier, flying into Queenstown, renting a car, and quickly discovering another of Otago's principal allures: how close everywhere is to everywhere else. My first stop, 20 minutes out, was Arrowtown, a meticulously preserved village dating back to the 1860s, when Otago was home to a gold rush that attracted upwards of 20,000 prospectors in pursuit of fortune. Like storybook mountain towns the world over, Arrowtown now attracts both the supremely well-off and a certain breed of creative eccentric, as reflected by the number of funky art galleries scattered among the upscale shops and antique stores.
I stopped into the area's newest gallery, Astor Bristed, which I'd found hidden down an alley in the town center. Focused on showcasing New Zealand's emerging artists, it was originally run out of a nearby loft before moving into the space in 2022.
“It's his first-ever show,” said Rosie Bristed, the gallery's young owner, as I admired deceptively simple flower paintings in steel frames from a Christchurch artist whose name I would learn to be Fergus Robertson. “He makes the frames—he's a big manly man who loves flowers.”
Bristed, who is from Wellington, attended university in Dunedin, on Otago's southeastern coast, and fell hard for Arrowtown while visiting friends. “It happens to a lot of people,” she told me, describing the gallery as being motivated by a desire to bring an edgier spirit to Arrowtown—and to ensure that she herself didn't have to leave. “I can walk out that door and in minutes be swimming in a pristine river. It's a lifestyle that's a fantasy in most places.”
The next morning I made my way north to the lakeside resort town of Wānaka for what would be the first of many helicopter rides—the only means of accessing Minaret Station Alpine Lodge, where I would be staying the night. In a country known for such retreats, Minaret stands out for being run by locals. The brainchild of Tim Wallis, a swashbuckling aviation entrepreneur who purchased the 50,000 acres in 1995, it is still operated by his family and reflects their sensibility. Thirty percent of the land functions as an active farm—station being the word Kiwis use for “ranch”—while the remaining 70 percent is left alone to allow the flora and fauna to rejuvenate.
The flight to Minaret took me over much of Lake Wānaka, including a small island that contained its own miniature lake, one of many hallucinatory sights that make you feel nature is not just existing but actively showing off. After landing, I hiked to the lodge, which appeared in a basin surrounded by extraordinary peaks: four stand-alone cabins of woodsy minimalism fanning out from the elegant main building. Rarefied as the retreat is, what I found remarkable about Minaret was the lack of coddling. The bar policy, for example: You can rummage through the top-shelf bottles and fix yourself whatever sounds delicious. At sunset, I made a martini with gin distilled in Cardona, a nearby town, and retreated to the porch to observe a family of red deer coming down from the mountain as the sky swirled in hues of peach and guava. This idyll blurred into another—dinner of lamb raised on the property—and yet another when I retreated to my cabin, where a hot tub awaited me on the private deck.
In the name of getting its guests even more intimate with the landscape, Minaret offers a number of bespoke excursions, ranging from guided hikes to helicopter tours of Fiordland National Park in the far south of the island. I spent the following morning horseback riding, a newer offering led by Ellie Nesbit, a savant of all things equine. I was flown by helicopter to the property's stables and introduced to Sam, the onyx-maned stallion from whose saddle I took in an astonishing tour. At one point a herd of deer, maybe 100 strong—a small fraction of the 10,000 farmed for venison on the property—followed us before bounding off, their silhouettes cascading over the hills. Our ride ended at the shore of the lake, where by some invisible magic a small table appeared covered in charcuterie and a bottle of chilled rosé. Decadent and dazzling stuff, without question. Yet in that moment it was something far more primal that resonated: the sensation of being wildly far away, geographically and psychically, from the rest of the world.
There were many facets of New Zealand I had been wholly ignorant of, among them the country's reputation for being one of the most exceptional places on earth to fly-fish—and of Otago's as being among the most revered by fishermen in all of New Zealand. Hardwired to want to try anything that exerts a pull on people, I spent the day after my meal at Amisfield driving to the northernmost bounds of the province, where a boutique fly-fishing operation called Cedar Lodge sits in the rugged wilds outside the blink-and-you'll-miss-it town of Makarora.
Recently taken into the fold of Eleven, a Colorado-based company specializing in luxury-tinged adventure, the property consists of a stately A-frame home with four guest suites and a cozy lounge area. Upon arriving, I was met by Cedar Lodge's manager, a wily, good-humored guy named Scottie Little. Tempering my expectations, he was quick to explain why New Zealand is a uniquely difficult environment for a novice fisherman: Unlike the US, the country does not stock its rivers. For the brown and rainbow trout that call them home, this means less competition for food, allowing the fish to grow to sizes unimaginable elsewhere. For those trying to reel one in, however, it means much fewer and generally wiser fish. “In Montana you can walk up and down 100 yards of river and come up with a dozen fish on your first day out,” he said. “Here you walk for mile to spot one.”
With all that in mind, Little led me on a casting tutorial in the verdant lawn surrounding the lodge, where I spent an hour aiming to lay the fly down in the sweet spot a few feet from the mouth of a wooden “fish.” Over the boozy, delicious steak dinner that ensued, I asked Little for a realistic assessment of my odds of catching something the following day.
“Low,” he said, grinning. “But high that you'll have an amazing time.”
My guide, Nicko Johnson, was a sardonic sage who ushered me into a helicopter that took us deep into the surrounding mountains, tracing the turquoise, implausibly crystalline waters of the Makarora River, and deposited us on a rocky escarpment. (At day's end, in a flourish befitting James Bond, Johnson would send the pilot our exact new location and we'd be flown back to the lodge for golden-hour canapés.) Stalking the banks of the river, Johnson displayed a borderline telepathic ability to locate fish. “Oooooh, that's a nice-looking shape,” he'd whisper, gesturing to where I saw only running water. Then I would cast, miss the mark, and see the fish only after it got spooked.
It went like that the whole day, which, as Johnson had predicted, was incredible. During one of our ambling conversations as we hiked many miles along the river, he summed up the specific zen of the pursuit: “You're so focused on the task—the knot, the fish, the cast—that you lose all track of where you are. Then you have these moments where you look up and—boom—this incredible landscape comes into sharp, almost overwhelming focus.”
Before leaving the lodge the next morning, I went out with another guide, Alex Scott. Taking into account my limited skills and the property's offerings for non-fishermen, he drove me north into Mount Aspiring National Park, a trip of only a few minutes that deposited us into a moss-choked landscape of waterfalls, fern trees, and symphonic birdsong. At one point while hiking along a stream, I asked Scott if I could practice a few casts—a lark, really, as that section of water was not known for fishing. It was then that I felt something pull on the rod.
“You got one! You got one!” Scott bellowed.
If you'd met me at a bar when I was a few drinks in, I might have told you that the fish I reeled in was gargantuan. In truth, it was maybe the size of a toddler's forearm. Equally true is that the moment—the mysterious tug on the line, the bloom of pride that followed—was about as thrilling as any I've experienced while traveling.
Otago is often referred to as one of New Zealand's youngest wine regions, given that, as recently as the mid-1990s, there were only a handful of vineyards run by renegades experimenting to find out which grapes thrived in the climate. But it is also, from another angle, the nation's oldest. Back in 1863, during the height of the gold rush, a prospecting Frenchman named Jean Désiré Féraud became the first person to produce wine in New Zealand. His winery, Monte Christo, was located outside the small town of Clyde, deep within Otago's dry, sun-scorched interior. But by the late 1800s, he closed shop and tore down his vines. Nearly a century passed before winemaking again took hold.
I spent the end of my trip on the grounds of Monte Christo, which reopened in 2023, giving it the paradoxical distinction of being Otago's oldest and newest winery. Stanley and Catherine Paris, along with Stanley's sons Nicholas and Alan, built the new Monte Christo winery around Féraud's original stone structure. It has been compellingly revamped, with an interior of exposed timber and plaster walls revealing a tastefully appointed patio, complete with a pétanque court, a vintage food truck, and profusions of wild thyme. “This is still a part of Otago that a lot of people don't come to,” said Kiki O'Rourke, a transplant from Ireland who manages the cellar door, as she led me through an exquisite tasting of Monte Christo's offerings. “The idea with this place is to change that—to be a destination and a base for exploring.”
I stayed two nights in one of the three cottages. Clyde is a town of only a few blocks, with two excellent restaurants, Olivers and the Old Clyde Bank, which, as the name suggests, occupies a space where one can easily imagine gold miners arguing over prospecting rights. It is also the hub of a dramatic new cycling route, the Lake Dunstan Trail, which connects to the town of Cromwell via nearly 25 miles of gravel switchbacks and bridges jutting from the granite boulders that line the lake. Renting a mountain bike from Bike It Now, a local outfitter, I headed out one morning on a ride that was sublime, vigorous, and occasionally hair-raising. It provided yet another opportunity to savor the endemic kindness that feels coded into the Kiwi DNA. When the chain on my bike broke, several people quickly stopped and helped me fix it, with one accompanying me back to Clyde to make sure the repair held.
After the ride, I'd planned to visit Two Paddocks, a winery owned by the New Zealand actor Sam Neill. Upon discovering that it was closed, I picked another via a cursory Google Maps consultation, though, when I pulled into Dunstan Road Wines, I grew concerned I'd been led to the wrong address. Clothes drying on a line, the squeal of children playing, a dog bounding at my feet: There were no conventional signposts that this was a business. Inside I was met by the winemaker, Marc Hatfield, who lives with his family on the modest property. What I had thought would be a brief stop stretched late into the afternoon after Hatfield brought me to a seat in his garden, which was overgrown with tomato vines, and began pouring me a number of delicious wines, including a 2017 Pinot Noir that was among the most memorable I'd had on my trip. “But I don't really like talking about wine,” Hatfield confessed. “You'll drink it. You'll either like it or you won't.”
He sat back, pouring himself a glass.
“What I like is people,” he said, growing more animated. “What's your story? What brought you here?”
Where to stay
With two cottages and a full-service lodge, Wānaka Homestead Lodge & Cottages offer easy access to Lake Wānaka and Mount Aspiring National Park. Four chalets at 3,000 feet above sea level, accessible only via helicopter, come with expert guides, fresh food, and prime views of Otago at Minaret Station Alpine Lodge. Eleven Cedar Lodge is a four-suite abode for thrill-seekers that offers fly-fishing and a variety of heli-adventures. Estate Gibbston Valley Lodge and Spa is near the Kawarau River and has 24 villas, its own winery, and a spa. Part of a development with a restaurant and a craft brewery, 11-bedroom inn Olivers Lodge & Stables is a convenient home base close to cycling trails and the Dunstan Golf Club.
Where to eat & drink
At Amisfield restaurant near Lake Hayes, Vaughan Mabee marries Otago's seasonal (and ethically sourced) bounty with wines from the organic vineyard. Chef-owner James Stapley of Kika whips local Kiwi produce into global dishes (Lumina lamb, gnocchi, market fish garnished with Japanese turnips). Roasted Merino lamb and duck in spiced Pinot Noir are stars at The Old Clyde Bank—a dining room in a former outpost of the Bank of New Zealand. Guests at Monte Christo Winery can bask outside the guest cottages, enjoying the climate that makes this estate's wines so well balanced. At Dunstan Road Wines, Marc Hatfield cultivates 31 rows of grapes to produce small batches of Pinot Noir, as well as Rieslings, rosés, and more.
This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
