The Locals' Off-Season Loop: Eight Stops Worth a Slow Ride This May
With festival crowds gone and the locals' discount running, May is the sweet spot for a slow ride through Wakatipu's best cellar doors and taprooms. Here's the loop we'd take ourselves.
The festival crowd has packed up. The international tour buses are heading north for the season. The poplars along the Arrow have dropped most of their leaves, and the trail surface has that loamy, settled feeling that only comes after the autumn storms have passed.
This is when locals ride.
May in the Wakatipu is the season the visitors miss. Mornings are crisp, days are clear, the cellar doors aren’t queued out the door, and the people pouring your tasting actually have time to talk to you. If you live here — or you’re here for shoulder season — this is the ride we’d take ourselves on a free Saturday.
It’s also the month our LOCAL20 code is live. Twenty percent off any tour, any rental, for anyone with a local address. Use it.
Here’s the eight-stop loop we run when we want a slow day.
1. Coffee in town: Cargo Brewery
Start in the CBD. Cargo Brewery opens early enough for breakfast and they pull a properly good coffee, which is more than you can say for most breweries pretending to do daytime trade. Fuel up here before you collect your bike from HQ on Gorge Road.
2. Eleventh Ave for a slow lunch (or a fast pint)
Whether you go before you saddle up or save it for the end, 11th Avenue is the CBD stop locals talk about and tourists never find. Quiet, good food, decent pour. If you ride out-and-back from town in a single day, this is your bookend.
3. Onto the trail: Canyon Brewing, Shotover Valley
Roll out of HQ, follow the Wharehuanui trail through the Shotover Valley, and you’ll hit Canyon Brewing before you’ve worked up enough thirst to deserve it. Doesn’t matter — sit under the trees, look across the gorge, drink a beer with a 200-metre view. This is the easiest stop on the loop. It’s also the one most riders try to skip in summer because they’re racing the daylight. In May you’ve got nowhere to be.
4. Into Gibbston: Waitiri Creek
From here the trail strings you through to the Gibbston Valley wine country. Waitiri Creek is a boutique cellar door that doesn’t get the foot traffic of the bigger names, which is exactly why we send people there. Relaxed tasting, beautiful covered patio, and the perfect first sip of a Gibbston Pinot before you’ve had three.
5. Kinross: the natural lunch stop
Five world-class wineries pour under one roof at Kinross, plus a kitchen that actually understands a long lunch. If you only stop at one cellar door this year, make it this one. The off-peak crowd is all locals and Wānaka day-trippers — it has a different energy than peak season.
6. Pinot pilgrimage: Monte Christo
Slightly off the main drag and worth the small detour. Monte Christo Winery is the one we tell visitors about when they ask ‘where do the locals actually go?’ Small operation, serious Pinot, and a covered tasting space that’s perfect when the late-autumn sun drops behind the hills. Walk-ins are welcome, parking’s easy, and the staff don’t rush you.
7. The Church Cellar Door & Cafe
A restored heritage church now pouring local wines, brewing barista coffee, and turning out craft beers on tap. The Church is the visual postcard of the Gibbston Valley — and the food is genuinely worth ordering. We tell people: don’t ride past it. Even if you don’t drink, the building alone is worth a stop.
8. The end-of-day pint: Gibbston Tavern
Wood-fired pizza. Beers on tap. Open from 11. The Gibbston Tavern is the only pub in Gibbston, and it’s where every honest day on the trail should end. Park the bike, order a slice, watch the light fade off the Remarkables. Then text us — we’ll come pick you up. (That’s literally how the shuttle works. We come to you.)
How to actually do this
Eight stops sounds ambitious. It is. You don’t need to hit all of them in one ride — and unless you’re treating each cellar door like a NASCAR pit stop, you probably can’t. Pick four to six. Save the rest for the second time around.
The two routes that cover this loop:
- Valley of the Vines runs Arrowtown to Gibbston with all the wine stops dialled in — Waitiri Creek, Kinross, Monte Christo, The Church, Gibbston Tavern. Half a day, return shuttle, you taste; we drive.
- Ride to Riches is the longer one-way ride from Arrowtown back to Queenstown, bookended in town by Cargo and 11th Avenue.
- The Ale Trail (Wharehuanui) picks up Canyon Brewing on the way out and works as a half-day option.
Or — and this is the one most locals choose in May — just hire a bike for the day at $60, take the map we hand you, and ride your own version of this loop. No shuttle scheduled, no booking time, no commitment. Just a day in the saddle.
Why ride in May at all?
A few honest reasons.
The trail is empty. You’ll go an hour without passing another rider on some sections.
The light is exceptional. Low-angle sun, long shadows, gold that you only get for about three weeks in late autumn.
The cellar doors have time. In peak summer the staff are pouring assembly-line tastings. In May they’ll open a bottle they haven’t put on the menu and ask what you think.
The bikes are fresh out of winter service. We re-shoe the fleet at the end of April — new tyres, fresh brake pads, drivetrains cleaned. May rides on the freshest gear of the year.
And the price. LOCAL20, twenty percent off, every tour, every hire, May and June. Drop your address at booking and the code applies.
If you’ve been meaning to do the loop and never get around to it because summer’s too busy, this is your six-week window. Book before the snow shuttles take over our calendar in June.
— Jay
