It is a landscape of schist gorges, river terraces and some of the southernmost serious vineyards on earth, and it earns a stop in its own right.
The Kawarau runs out of Lake Wakatipu in a cold, fast, blue-green flow and cuts east through a gorge toward Cromwell. State Highway 6 follows it, a road of constant, easy bends hugging the cliffs, with rock overhangs and the river just below, and at the Kawarau Bridge it passes the place where commercial bungy jumping began in 1988. Whatever you think about jumping off bridges, the engineering and the setting are impressive, and the viewing area is free to watch from.
Gibbston itself is a high valley whose cool nights and dry summers suit pinot noir, and the old schist hills around it give the place a strange moonscape look. Cellar doors cluster along the highway, and there is a cheese place or two for lunch. Do the sensible thing if you are riding: taste lightly, or let the pillion taste. Further on, the gorge was the scene of dramatic gold sluicing in the 1860s, and tracks and stone remnants still dot the hillsides in places.
Cromwell, about fourteen kilometres away, is the town with proper services, fuel and food, and a stone-fruit reputation that shows in the big fibreglass fruit sculptures by the highway. The old town is partly drowned beneath Lake Dunstan, flooded when the Clyde Dam was built in the early 1990s, and its historic buildings were moved to a rebuilt precinct beside the water. Arrowtown, nearer to the north, is a classic gold-rush village worth the short detour.
The riding here is relaxed rather than extreme, ideal after the harder passes. The best time is late afternoon in autumn, when the vine leaves turn red and gold against the dry hills. In winter, the gorge can hold frost in the shadows well into the day, so watch for black ice on shaded corners.