On Sunday I went with my friends to Toast Martinborough, an annual wine festival about 2 hours north east of Wellington. It is an extremely popular event, all 10,000 tickets sold out in five minutes. We started early, meeting up in town before 8 AM at a McDonalds (the breakfast of champions). We got spots on a bus hire so our transportation was sorted and we headed out of the city around 9 AM. The bus was crazy! Lots of drinking and shenanigans were going on, I don’t know how some of the guys could be drinking beer before a wine festival, that is a recipe for disaster.
It was a beautiful 25 degrees out in Martinborough with a nice cool breeze in the air. The festival was set up as a circuit with 10 vineyards participating with shuttle busses to go around between them. We started the circuit backwards because that had the shorter line which turned out to be a good decision because we started at the best vineyard. Each vineyard had a different type of food and entertainment set up to compliment their wine. Some places had small intimate stages with benches while others had large stages in open fields.We managed to get to six different vineyards before heading back to the starting vineyard to finish our day off.
I managed to avoid heat stroke on the day through lots of water and plenty of shade. Not everyone was so fortunate though as we heard the ambulance making the rounds and a few people had to be taken away. On the way back to the bus we came across a guy passed out on someone’s front lawn. The bus ride back to Wellington was slow and painful, I was pretty worn out by then. We made it back to Wellington in one piece but none of us had the energy to go out any more, I went straight home and to bed. It was an all around great day.
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