If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (NZD633.91), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Wallingford Homestead has a history of rewarding those who’ve travelled far. No, not a Tolkien reference (although comparisons of its leafy pastures to a Hobbiton-esque idyll seem unavoidable): this patch of Hawke’s Bay sang out to John Davies Ormond in 1847 when he crossed from Britain to build both the farm and a career in politics. And it called to restaurateurs Jeanette and Chris Stockdale who came here from Sydney for a quieter, more fulfilling life. And it just keeps on giving to those who mosey to its door: a warm greeting from Jeanette, legendary tasting menus dreamt up by Chris (probably why you’re here), and a true home for those who wander and wonder.
Smith Extra
Get this when you book through us:
A sourdough-making class with Chris; GoldSmiths also get a glass of local sparkling (or non-sparkling) wine
Five, some with verandas, or the house booked as a whole has 10 rooms. The hotel is open Wednesday to Sunday during high season and Thursday to Saturday throughout the rest of the year.
Check–Out
10am, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £346.69 (NZ$729), including tax at 15 per cent.
More details
Rates include a two-course breakfast with freshly baked sourdough, homemade jams, just-churned butter, cereals and orchard picks. Then something hot (kedgeree, scrambled eggs à la Bill’s bistro, where Chris used to work, or Peruvian tacu-tacu.
Also
Ramps make the property accessible for guests in wheelchairs, and there’s one adapted room (Uncle Dave’s) with a wide entrance and grab rails in the bathroom.
Hotel closed
The hotel closes annually from Christmas Eve to 2 January. The hotel is only open from Wednesday to Sunday during high season, and Thursday to Saturday throughout the rest of the year.
At the hotel
Free WiFi; working farm; truffle groves; lounge, free cookies, biscuits, cakes and fruit to snack on, coffee from Third Eye roasters, T leaf T teas, and a fridge with a selection of milks; free-to-borrow bikes and wellies; TV lounge; lawn games; and laundry room (staff can look after your loads on request). In rooms: Nespresso coffee machine, T Leaf T teas and organic tisanes, fridge with milk, central heating, iron and board, bathrobes and slippers, and local Real World bath products.
Our favourite rooms
All of the rooms here are generously proportioned (while still feeling cocooning), each with a unique look that’s in keeping with the house’s period charm. However, we do love a scenic veranda.
Poolside
The pool and pavilion are a short walk from the main house, so you can just saunter over in your robe – there are towels, a shower and a bathroom (with shower caps and bath products) there as needed. It’s roomy enough for guests to share swimming lanes and heated to 27 degrees, plus the views are more inspiring than most you see while front-crawling.
Spa
There’s no spa at the homestead, but an aromatherapy massage at the hotel from a local practitioner can be arranged on request.
Packing tips
You’ll need clothing you’re not too precious about for knocking around the farm and gardens, but otherwise your hosts take good care of you here. In fact, you’ll likely leave enriched with some haute culinary know-how.
Also
A two-night minimum stay is required for exclusive-use bookings.
Children
Wallingford Homestead is for over-18s only, unless you book it out exclusively. Little ones will love the farm, but watch out for any agri-hazards (open fires or gates, moody bulls, errant machinery).
Breakfast can be served on your private veranda; for dinner there’s something lovely about the kindred spiritedness of wowing all guests at once in the dining room.
Dress Code
While there’s no standing on ceremony, you may want to spruce up for the culinary show that’s put on here.
Hotel restaurant
Both Jeanette and Chris put the passion into this project with gusto, but the kitchen is where the latter’s heart lies, and he’s the kind of curious and ever-experimenting chef we like, with a whole farm full of ingredients to tinker with, depending on what’s flourishing that season or been foraged that day (plus links with local hunters, fishing boats and cheese-makers). Meals are very much main events, and run long with multiple courses, with all guests gathered in the flower-papered dining room – at the heart of which is the Ormond family's old piano, now topped with the wine-pairing flights for that eve – to bask in the glow of gastronomic excellence. Truffles from the farm feature, alongside fruits and vegetables, fresh dairy products and Angus beef. An edible odyssey might kick off with figs and cheese drizzled in loquat vinegar, move through angel-hair noodles tossed with oxtail and sea snails in umami broth; then Arapawa lamb with sheep-milk caramel, hazelnut and burnt leeks in a pine-nut and mushroom sauce; and big-finishing with blueberries and liquorice with milk and dill. But, Chris is bound to throw a few surprises your way…
Hotel bar
There’s an alfresco bar called the Wallingford where you can grab a laidback glass of local Alpha Domus wine, a craft brew from Aro Valley’s Garage Project, or a negroni made with fixings from Hastings Distillers.
Last orders
Breakfast is usually between 8.30am and 9.30am, but you’re basically at home here, so the owners are happy to tweak the timings if you let them know the night before. Dinner starts with apéritifs at 6.30pm, before the main event at 7pm.
Room service
If you buy a bottle of wine at dinner you can take it back to your room – the small wine fridges will keep it at the right temp.
Wallingford Homestead sits at the heart of coastal wine country Hawke’s Bay, along the winding Porangahau road. As you arrive, rugged farmland gives way to manicured lawns.
Planes
There are two domestic airports close to the hotel: Napier is around an hour’s drive away, and Palmerston North is about a two-hour drive. International travellers can connect either via Auckland or Christchurch. A chauffeur can whisk you to the hotel for NZ$300 one-way (in an Outlander on request).
Automobiles
Unless you fancy taking on an epic Hobbit-esque journey, a car will come in handy for reaching this remote corner; Auckland is a six-hour drive away, but Wellington is closer, at three-and-a-half hours. There’s secure parking about 500 metres from the main hotel and free-to-use, type-two electric-vehicle charging stations onsite.
Other
All that natural beauty looks even better from above; charter a chopper to enjoy a 20-minute extended helicopter shot from Napier airport, touching down on the Wallingford estate.
Worth getting out of bed for
Wallingford House is just part of the story here – the Ormond family estate first cultivated in 1853 was once much larger and you can get a sense of that as you go beyond the manicured cottage gardens and oak-tree-studded QE II bushland reserve (which takes around 90 minutes to complete) to explore the more rugged Angus Stud Station and wider and wilder Hawke’s Bay. You’ll see the inner workings of the farm where the Angus beef and lamb you’ll be eating are reared, as well as the fertile vegetable patches and orchards, and the 1,800 Périgourdine trees that provide treasured truffles of Chris’s cuisine. Visit during the winter harvest and you’ll see springer-spaniel Jim sniff them out (he was home-trained using Youtube tutorials and a tennis ball covered in truffle oil). The owners will happily pack you a picnic for your wanderings on request, too. Gather around the concrete kitchen table Chris hand-poured himself for lessons in cooking up sourdough, truffle ice-cream and other treats, and bowl food (fresh gnocchi, cioppino stew, moules marinières…) Croquet, cricket and Pétanque are set up on the lawn each day, and you can also borrow mountain bikes for threading through the truffle trees onsite, and for offsite forays – Waipukurau’s Tuki Tuki Trail is remarkably scenic. Try your hand at fly-fishing close by, Porangahau Beach’s quiet golden sands are a 10-minute drive away, or you can splash about in the Waihi Falls, about an hour away. Waipawa (a 30-minute drive north) has antique stores and art galleries, and the Central Hawke’s Bay Museum. And take a deep breath before asking for directions to the longest place name in the world: Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu – there’s not much there, but it’s debatably worth the trip to have your photo taken with the sign. And, Aroha Helicopters can show you Hawke’s Bay in all its glory, with flights along Cape Kidnappers coast, out to Hastings and Te Mata Peak or hovering over art deco city Napier. If you get a taste for the high life, they also offer lessons.
Local restaurants
This is destination dining at its finest, so you don’t really need to seek sustenance elsewhere, and if you do you’ll need to go quite far to find it. But, there are gastro hotspots in this farm-flush region. Mission Estate is first and foremost a winery opened by 19th-century French pioneers; but the restaurant is as much of a lure with the likes of pig terrine with honeycomb butter, beef Bourguignon with potato doughnuts, and crab cakes in espelette velouté. And Malo in Havelock North has enticing prospects of goat’s cheese, honey and thyme profiteroles; pork belly in a ginger jus with spiced sweet potato and apple slaw; lamb rump with romesco and hazelnut dukkah. Black Barn Vineyards makes a romantic countryside setting for its menu of babganoush croquettes with sheep’s milk labneh, chicken and duck terrine with tiger-milk mustard and preserved cherry; and wild red deer with plum and parsnip.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this pioneering home and farmstead in rural Hawke’s Bay and waved a sad goodbye to co-owner Chris Stockdale’s superlative cookery, a full account of their gloriously gluttonous break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Wallingford Homestead on New Zealand’s north isle…
You’ll be ‘truffle shuffling’ with joy after a stay at Wallingford Homestead – or well, maybe just in your head; this is a nice place after all – the rare Périgourdine treats are cultivated on the estate’s farm and are infused into butters and oils, enrich fresh sourdough bread with earthy flecks, fall like tasty snowflakes over soups and pastas, and even punch up ice-cream. But, chef Chris – who left behind a very impressive (albeit intense) culinary career in Sydney to delve deeper into slow cookery and adopt an equally paced way of life – is no one-truffle pony. His tasting menus are the reason people venture to this remote part, and all leave raving about gastronomic adventures encompassing dishes such as sunchokes with blackened apple, sunflower and walnuts; 100-day-aged Angus beef (from the stud farm on the estate) with celeriac, shallots and prawn butter; or wild venison with coffee, beets and berries. His is part of a double act that makes this place glow with enthusiasm and positivity the moment his partner Jeanette meets you with a big smile and leads you to the ‘hello’ room, where homemade cakes and cookies await. A home this is indeed, as it has been since the pioneering Ormond family built it in 1853 (photos of them hang on the walls, and their heirloom piano takes pride of place in the dining room). So, even if you do wander far, out to the Porangahau coast and Waihi Falls or try the tongue-twisting longest place name in the world (Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu), your wanderings will culminate in mingling with fellow guests over apéritifs of local wines, and a heavenly culinary communion – maybe with a whole deck of truffles to shuffle through…
