The North Island’s wine country is one of New Zealand’s warmest, driest regions with golden colours stretching across arid plains. The scene here is made up of vineyards and orchards laden with fruit, fertile farmlands that sweep to the perfect waves on the coast and laidback seaside settlements.

Charismatic, seaside Napier is the region’s biggest city and one of the best-preserved concentrations of 1930s art-deco architecture, after a deadly earthquake in 1931 saw the total rebuild of the settlement. A fascinating city to explore by foot, with its terracotta thoroughfare lined with palm trees leading down to the main beach. The city is the perfect base to discover the nearby wineries and sample their world-famous drops, as well as visiting Cape Kidnappers where a massive colony of gannets nest between November and February.

While most notable for its award-winning wine, the region has also long been dubbed the fruit bowl of New Zealand with a lot of the country’s fresh produce grown here.

When to go

Hawke's Bay has a Mediterranean climate with long, pleasantly hot summers and mild winters.

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