Toast Martinborough – Wine and Food Festival

‘The Best Sunday Ever’ was the hashtag for the 2022 event of Toast Martinborough, held on the third Sunday in November; and it was definitely a fantastic Sunday and a much anticipated event, after being cancelled for the past two years due to the pandemic. The event was first held in 1992 and is held across multiple vineyards in the wine village of Martinborough, bringing people together for a day of fine wine, food and music.

I headed over the hill from Wellington with wonderful friends of over twenty years, just missing hubby – who had picked up covid and so was sadly stuck at home feeling rotten.

With friends of over twenty years at Toast Martinborough.

As we lined up to get our festival glasses music filled the village square. Our feet were tapping to the beat of The Noodles before we even got to the first vineyard. There were buses running all day, between each of the festival sites, but we found walking worked for us and the first vineyard we visited was ‘Vynfields‘, where a glass of ‘Bliss Pink’ sparkling rose and ‘The Beat Girls‘ got us dancing before it was even midday.

Our next stop was Moy Hall, where there was a wonderful array of food to choose from, and a fun photo-booth and ice-cream van in the middle of the vineyard.

After some lunch, a top up of wine and a dance, we walked over to ‘Tirohana Estate‘, before having a boogie at ‘Ata Rangi‘.

The festival had a useful ‘App’ which showed available capacity at each of the vineyards (we were ‘scanned’ in and out by our wristbands at each vineyard). We didn’t make it to the vineyard hosting ‘Luna’ wines (was at full capacity for much of the afternoon) or manage to make our way down to Te Kairanga, but we did pretty well making it to 5 of the 7 festival sites, finishing at Palliser Estate.

We walked down to Palliser, a walk of a couple of kilometres, enjoying a refreshing Kapiti gelato on the way.

There was such a great atmosphere throughout the festival and we all had a wonderful time eating, drinking and dancing a very wonderful Sunday away! Hopefully hubby can join us next year!