Sven Olsen’s Brutal Canadian Love Saga are back, and this time they’re playing Featherston! Featherston is a small town in the Wairarapa, part of the Greater Wellington conurbation. We drove over the Remutaka hills to get there on a Saturday afternoon – dropping Nicola at the venue for rehearsal whilst I went onward to book into our accommodation at the Martinborough Hotel.
In the evening I drove back to Featherston – about 18km – so that we could have an early dinner at Brac & Bow, the main restaurant in Featherston. Whilst they were pretty prompt with service for cocktails and starters, the mains took a long time to come out so we were a bit rushed at the end as Nicola had to get back to set up in the Kiwi Hall. I wandered over a little later and staked my place in the second row.
The concert was free/koha, and the hall was full. Featherston isn’t just full of knitting and retired architects (possible future song title?), and the hall was buzzing. They played some of their classics, as well as using the “N” word – New Material – to celebrate life in Wellington and New Zealand, with such songs as Kron of Hastings (“he tagged the rest home, and the Countdown, and the town hall, and the flowerpots”), Brobdignagian Nightmare (about Nelson’s clock tower), Tasered At The Chicken Joint, Another Ratshit Night In Paradise, and many more.
After a post-gig night of debauchery driving back to Martinborough,
we rose the next day for a leisurely exploration of vineyards. Starting at the
Library, to get a list of which ones were open in off-season (quite a few!), we
planned a route, then completely failed to stick to it. Instead we started off
in Tiwaiwaka Vineyard, which hasn’t actually been open to the public on the
occasions we’ve visited before, but now is (I believe it used to be by
appointment only). It’s a small husband-and-wife operation, and we chatted to
the owner, Mort, about his wines and wine in general as we ran through a
tasting of seven different wines from the rosé, dry semillon, chardonnays,
merlot and late harvest semillon.
We missed the next stop and went straight to Tirohana, where we tasted wines and stopped for lunch. The restaurant here offers either two course or three-course meals, but we weren’t in the mood for that, so we broke all the rules and ordered four starters to have tapas-style instead.
In the evening we dined in-house, but weren’t actually all that hungry, so didn’t take advantage of the culinary excellence on offer. The restaurant, Union Square, is run by the same people who used to run Zibbibo in Wellington (long since closed), so we missed out a bit there. Oh well, next time…
On Monday morning we went for breakfast at the Martinborough Village Café, largely as it seemed to be the only place open…Martinborough is
not exactly a hive of industry and is mostly dependent on the wine trade, which
comes alive at the weekends and summertime. We stopped on the way back at C’est Cheese but unfortunately they were out of the Mount Eliza Red Leicester that I
wanted, and were waiting for a new delivery in the spring. We bought a couple
of other cheeses then drove back across the Remutaka hills to Wellington.
