Hunter Valley
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2005
1
68
158
Trip End
Jul 21, 2007
Last weekend five of us took a trip out to the Hunter Valley to get a look at inland New South Wales while getting good and debauched on wine and cheese, and I am pleased to inform the mission was a resounding success. It's a gorgeous sprawling area of rolling, vine covered hills around 2 hours drive north of Sydney and the 'cabin' we stayed in was attached to a boutique winery at the top of a hill with an gloriously uninterrupted view over the valley. The place was more like a villa with the whole of one side made of glass. We hunkered down on the Friday night, supped wine and played games and the following afternoon jumped on a bus which ferried us around the world class wineries. We had a tour of Tyrells and after tasting among others the flagship 'Vat 4' Semillon settled on some champagne, a lesser but still lush Semillon and the lovely '4 Acre' Shiraz. We then went off to a cheese shop where we snapped up a delicious jar of marinated fetta and an unbelievable soft cheese called Labna which is made with chillis and soaked in olive oil and herbs. Last stop was the Blue Tongue brewery where we sampled a paddle of six brews the pick of which were the alcoholic ginger ale and the pilsner which we consumed with the wine and cheese that evening followed by a monster Carbonara. The left over mix of which we added 5 more eggs to the following morning to produce some helladecadent scrambled eggs! All in all a top weekend with great weather, great company and lots of laughs.
