New Zealand with Bill Blosser

Summer in January? Welcome to New Zealand! We’re setting up for our start in Auckland, the country’s buzzing center of art, fashion, food and—of course—wine. After meeting Bill and Dorinda and checking into a harborside hotel, we’ll delve deep into the area’s rich Maori culture. These indigenous peoples have traditions spanning centuries from their unique language, literature, folklore and perhaps most known, their performing arts. We’ll get to experience a performance of their spine-tingling, foot-stomping haka war dance. This dance showcases their Polynesian heritage, stories and identity through synchronized timing, posture, footwork and sound.

For dinner, we’ll head to woodsy-chic foodie spot Depot from acclaimed chef Al Brown. We’ll feast and get a meet-and-greet, then toast to our life-changing week to come.

After waking for a big breakfast, we’re headed deeper into the kiwi wine scene. We take a short flight to Hawke’s Bay on the east coast and set up in boutique cottages where rows of sun-kissed vines almost press up against your personal patio at Craggy Range Winery.

First, we’ll have a wine-filled lunch feast—with coastline views stretched out below us—at the award-winning Mission Estate Winery, an elegant estate first set up by missionaries from the Loire in 1851—and now home to New Zealand’s oldest wines.

We follow with dinner and a wine tasting and gorge ourselves on the private tasting menu prepared by our winery’s head chef Casey McDonald, a worldly Michelin-star vet recently returned home to New Zealand. The wine, and the stories, will flow into the night!

Our sense of adventure amps way up today. We begin with a short flight to New Zealand’s South Island—known for its fjords and rugged mountains and sprawling skies—where we’ll relocate to the country’s adventure capital, Queenstown.

We’ll take in a bird’s eye view from its Skyline Gondola overlooking a panorama of snow-capped peaks and the vast clear-water Lake Wakatipu. Dinner’s a special treat, with a feast of local meats (venison, rabbit, lamb, squid, oysters) at Botswana Butchery, occupying a historic cottage across from the lip of the lake. We’ll eat well here, and toast the start of our final New Zealand stop. But rest up: our biggest day is yet to come.

Our adventure continues today with a ride along New Zealand’s “most dangerous road,” built in the gold-rich Skipper’s Canyon during the late 1880s. Don’t worry. We’ll take it easy, as we hug roadside mountains as vertical drop-offs to the canyon floor are a foot away! We pass a narrow one-lane suspension bridge, stop at a schoolhouse deep in the canyon for a picnic lunch, then stop over at Mt. Edward Winery for our lance chance at a classic wine tasting. We’ll meet with the winemaker and hear about their fully committed organic approach to growing grapes and their all-natural approach to winemaking.

We’ll meet up for our farewell dinner at the Amisfield Winery, a seven-course “trust the chef” affair of locally sourced ingredients and delicious wines matching each step of the way—the perfect cap to an incredible trip.