An early start was in order to get us out the the airport in plenty of time. With our arrival achieved, it was on with the formalities. With my Velocity membership about to revert to Silver, I was hoping to squeeze the last little bit of value out of my Gold membership. Why does all that matter? The main benefits are a bunch of queue jumping opportunities. Express lane through immigration, priority boarding and priority baggage collection. With all of that we sat in the lounge with well over an hour to kill, so helped ourselves to breakfast, before lining up to board, well actually not lining up to board. We took our seats only find shortly thereafter that they had been double booked. Velocity Gold came to the rescue and we were upgraded to Business – far more in keeping with the style I would like to become accustomed! Good start to the holiday. Three hours later we were crossing the west coast of New Zealand en-route to Dunedin.
As expected, Dunedin was indeed cold and wet. We picked up our rental car and drove to the Studio apartment that will be home for the next few days. The driveway is particularly steep, so the owner suggested to park the car in the top car park in case of snow and ice. We’d planned to do the tour of the Speights Brewery, so we ventured out in the close to zero temperatures. I am learning quite quickly about rugging up.
The tour itself ended up being a private tour. Clearly everyone else had deemed it to be too cold for such things. The guide was knowledgeable and passionate about the brewery and beer in general. Speights have been brewing on this site since 1876, but the methods have changed much in that time. From Persian Oak barrels at the start to the stainless steel equipment of today. The facility once employed around 200 people, now it’s 36 people.
We finished the tour with a beer tasting of their current range of beers on tap. They have a quite nice Pilsener, and a good brown ale – Speights Old Dark.The tour ended with dinner which for me was Mushroom Soup (to warm up!) and roast lamb, while Deb opted for the Seafood Chowder followed with Pork Ribs.
So back at the apartment, there’s just time for a quiet whiskey before bed.
Until tomorrow!
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