HotelChatter

The Farm at Cape Kidnappers has won multiple awards and honorable mentions since its opening in November 2007, like its recent rating as the world’s 4th best golf course by Golf Magazine. The hotel’s décor has also been garnering attention, including a spread in Architectural Digest thanks to its aesthetic of rustic chic, meaning burlap curtains, metal animal sculptures, unfinished wooden furniture, exposed stone walls…and a chandelier made out of antlers.

I hear the Lodge Suites with their northeast views are the best in the 26-room resort since they overlook the bay. Rates for those rooms start at $465, and climb up to $1265 in high season, though that is still a far cry from the $8549 that the four-bedroom Owner's Cottage would cost.

The Farm’s restaurant has become world-famous thanks to glowing write-ups in publications like Gourmet, Food & Wine, and Conde Nast Traveler. It also lives up to its name as mutton-chopped Chef Dale Gartland pulls ingredients from the resort’s 6000-acre sheep farm (of which guests can take an extensive tour, and perhaps help shear some sheep in the process) for his dinner menu, which changes nightly. Though there is a formal dining room (where gentlemen are required to wear a jacket), I’d be sure to book an evening in the private, round Snug room with its roaring fireplace, sheepskin sectional, fur pillows and log-section cocktail tables.

The Spa, with its three white-washed treatment rooms and selection of comfy wicker furniture also looks like a nice place to relax over the course of an afternoon, as does the cabana by the little pool with an infinity edge overlooking the ocean, 500 feet below.

The hotel and its amenities are only half the draw, though. Even a city boy like me wants to get some nature-loving in, with cliff-side picnics, a visit to the huge colony of gannets (native birds related to the booby…tee hee) that lives on the property, sundry extreme sporting activities like paragliding, ATV-ing, and trout-fishing in one of the nearby rivers. The hotel will also arrange hikes in search of endangered kiwi birds, and visits to a Maori village for the day.

Let’s not forget the reason many people are coming to New Zealand these days, though: the wine. The country has over 500 wineries, over 70 of which are located in the Hawke’s Bay region, making it the second largest wine-producing area in the country. Though there are few vineyards on Cape Kidnappers itself, if you trek a little inland, or even just the 12 miles or so to the town of Napier, there is wine-tasting aplenty at such well-known wineries as Stonecroft Wines, Mission Estate, Craggy Range and Trinity Hill—both named after nearby spots—and, of course, the famous Te Awa winery (and restaurant) in the Dickensian-sounding Gimblett Gravels.

Good food, good wine, good sports and a world-class hotel…and I’d only have to fly 6,500 miles to get there.