Booze and Roos in the Baroosa Valley

  Adelaide, Australia
Monday, January 28, 2008

Shoot!  We are way behind!!  Blame it on lack of Internet in our last couple locations.  Alright, so back to the Barossa Valley we go.  Andrew and I arrived in Adelaide, Australia after a short flight from Sydney on January 24th.  We are still fascinated by how easy the check-in process at the airports have been.  It is like going back to flying in the 90's in the states.  We get through ticketing and security in what amounts to 20 minutes tops. 

At any rate, we walked across the street from the Adelaide airport to get our rental car from Europcar that would drive us the 90 minutes Northwest of the city into the Barossa Valley.  We had secured a fantastic silver Subaru Outback, the appropriate choice considering the fact that we were in Australia.  I set out to do the first leg of the trip to the Barossa Valley as Andrew would be our navigator.  We were a little nervous about driving on the opposite side of the road, but were surprised to find that everything was opposite, the passenger side was the driver side, the gear shift was on our left side, our indicator was on the right and the volume button for the radio was opposite of what we were used to.  This was going to be an interesting first run at driving abroad and would hopefully get us ready for driving throughout New Zealand.

Our first trial was to get out of the rental car lot.  There went the windshield wipers, "damn",  I thought to myself... "remember, the indicator is on the right side and make sure to stick to the left".  OK, we were out.  Next came the rotary and then a U-Turn as we were going in the wrong direction and another windshield wiper...  We spent the better part of the next hour talking about how strange it was to be on the opposite side of the car and the road as we navigated ourselves out of Adelaide and approached the wine country.  We were starving and decided to stop for a quick bite in a small town on the road to the wine country called Gawler.  We had some wonderful Panini sandwiches at a local haunt called the Viva Cafe and we found they would be perfect to hold us over as we ventured into the wine country of Australia. 

Upon returning to the car, we saw that it was a few more feet from the curb than everyone else's and with that I explained to Andrew the difficulty of parallel parking that he would not discover until the next day.  With that we decided Andrew would take the wheel and there went the windshield wipers again.  With a few more flicks of the wipers, we arrived in Barossa.  Our first stop was a fantastic winery called Yaldara.  We were so impressed with their Tawny port that we bought a bottle that helped top off my luggage to over 25 Kilos on the way to New Zealand.  We ventured on to Jacobs Creek, a mass production winery that had decent inexpensive wine and really liked one of the Shiraz's called Gramps (and purchased a bottle to drink later that evening).  We continued on to their wildlife preserve that is located near the entrance of the wineries and walked around the grounds where the Wallabies and the Ostrich's were kept.

The Valley

A little about Barossa.  Unlike the states, the wine tasting in Barossa is free!  There are over 60 wineries in the area that specialize in Shiraz and they have a number of Sauv Blanc's that are wonderful.  Not to mention they have wonderful red sparkling wine's that are spectacular.  Unfortunately red champagne has not yet taken in the states, but I know I for one would import the red sparkling wines they offered to accompany breakfast or an afternoon bbq.  You can try as many of the wines as you like and some of the wineries had over 30 wines you could try without any expectations of you buying a bottle.  Being responsible drivers, we tried the one's we had either heard about, were recommended by our servers or one's that appealed to our likes. 
PHOTO_ID_L=the-view-from-our-room-in-barossa.jpg
We checked into our hotel, the Novatel Barossa Valley at around 4:30 pm.  We were blown away by the view upon entering our room as we looked directly out onto rolling buff hills and endless green vineyards.  We walked around the beautiful grounds for half an hour, checked out the golf shop at Tanunda Pines (where we would be playing golf in the morning) and tasted a couple of wines at the hotels free wine tasting room.  We retreated to our balcony shortly thereafter, where we opened our Jacob's Creek Shiraz to enjoy while playing domino's in the late afternoon sun.  While playing our game, I commented that our view was a lot like looking out from a balcony in the Napa Valley, that was until a Kangaroo appeared in the distance.  Napa certainly does not have Kangaroos!

Me on our balcony

After a heated game (Andrew won this time... boooo)  we showered and went to Harry's, the restaurant at the Hotel.  Though we had a gorgeous view of the sun set (which sets around 9pm by the way) we were less than impressed for the somewhat expensive dinner we had.  Not to mention, because Australia does not make a practice of giving tips, the service was awful.  If only they would decrease the price of food here and increase tip percentages, Australia would be very close to perfect.

Andrew in front of Tanunda Pines

We woke up around 7am and were at breakfast by 7:30am.  Andrew wanted to be at the course by 8am to hit a few balls with our rental clubs.  We both had a nice set of Nike DSC clubs, which included a demo 3 hybrid for yours truly... the one club I had told Andrew I would miss having in my bag.  After hitting a few balls, we ventured onto the course unsure about what was ahead.  Having been  in a drought for over 6 years, we found the course to be a little dry, beautiful and in good shape, but dry.  Not to mention, the yardage was in meters, so every time we looked at our GPS on our cart we had to do some math to calculate our yardage.  With a 44 and a 43 on the front 9 we couldn't really complain.  I kept repeating to Andrew, "We are playing golf in the Australian outback!"  The idea was thrilling and despite 90 degree heat, rental clubs and playing the course for the first time, we ended with a 90 and a 92.  I could not be happier, Andrew was hoping for a little better, but we were both in such good spirits having played golf in Australia, scores did not matter.

(Andrew helped write the rest of this entry, as he was a bit excited about our wine tasting adventure!) We changed quickly after our round and set off to explore some of the smaller boutique wineries of the Valley.  We visited Rockford first as we had heard great things about the ambiance, but nobody mentioned how nice the people who worked there were. Rockford's tasting room (referred to as a "Cellar Door" in Australia) was made of cobblestone and looked like a small house.  There was a young girl working there who took us under her wing and practically planned out the rest of our day.  She mapped our day out for us and even made reservations for dinner at a place called 1918 in Tanunda.

We took most of her advice and headed to a winery called Peter Lehmann to have lunch consisting of the most spectacular Weighbridge platter of chutneys, salami, ham, freshly baked bread, various cheeses and olives.  Though we commented it could feed four people, we polished off the whole thing.  Though Peter Lehmann was one of the original winemakers in the Barossa and is one of the largest wine producers in Australia, their Cellar Door had a small and inviting feel to it. Lisa really liked "The Mentor and I liked a Shiraz that we had tried a few days earlier.

We then made our way to Langmeil, home of the oldest producing vine in the world, and their Freedom Shiraz from those vines did not dissapoint! Langmeil had an extremely friendly staff and, like Rockford, was also set in a small cobblestone building. We found it interesting that people could purchase an individual, producing vine for $500 that produced wine each year. We wanted to buy our own little vineyard in the Barossa, but weren't sure when we'd ever get to see it again.

Our next stop was at Willows, which was built on the grounds of an old hospital. The owners of the winery had been Doctors for 6 generations before the 7th decided to become a winemaker. Their wine was fantastic and we enjoyed the names of 2 of their most famous wines, in honor of their heritage "Bonesetter Shiraz" and "The Doctor's Sparkling."

Gibson's

We then stopped at Gibson's and were greeted by an extremely friendly dog. At this point Lisa exclaimed "I love this place - they even have dogs that greet us!!" Gibson's walked the line between old school and new school, with a 100+ year old farmhouse facing a recently built, modern wine tasting room. Lisa and I enjoyed chatting with the staff and bought our only bottle of the day - Wagtail Shiraz (which I'm sipping as I write this!!)

Our final stop was at Bethany Wines, which is one of the better known wineries in the region - and we now know why. Like all of the other wineries we visited, Bethany had a charming and helpful staff and had fantastic wine - many of whose grapes were grown on Kangaroo Island, south of mainland Australia. 

We returned home to shower, do some laundry and pack for New Zealand.  We headed to our 8pm reservation and met up with our friend from Rockford who also worked as a waitress at 1918.  I had a fantastic pasta with asparagus, pumpkin and ricotta and based on our friend's recommendation, Andrew had the Kangaroo with fresh figs... it was the specialty of the evening in honor of Australia Day which was the next day.  He said it tasted like steak meets rabbit and he loved it.  I found it a little tough, but had wonderful flavor.    We returned home, stuffed, and watch the rest of the Federer - Djorkovic Australian Open match and get some sleep before heading off to New Zealand in the morning.  

We packed up the Subi around 8am on the 26th and sadly left the Barossa Valley.  After parking our car practically in front of departure terminal and handing over the keys to Europcar... yet again, we had an extremely easy check in process at the airport and boarded our flight.  We were all settled in our seats, ready for our flight to Auckland with its quick connection to Christchurch, where we would be spending the night, only to be offloaded and delayed to repair a problem with the front wheel of the aircraft.  The 2-hour delay was just enough time for us to miss our connection to Christchurch and our stay at the lovely Charlotte Jane.  I called Meg our travel agent from a random cell phone belonging to the gate agent to let her know the bad news.  We were to be stuck in Auckland for the night and we needed to cancel the Charlotte Jane and cancel delivery of our rental car to the hotel and pick it up from the airport in the morning. 

Air New Zealand could not have been more accommodating about the situation.  Not only did they follow up with our travel agent about our plans while we were on our flight, but they booked us in the Grand Chancellor hotel at the airport and gave us vouchers for dinner and breakfast, not to mention transportation.  They updated us mid-flight about our new plans and told us they had booked us on a 7:50am flight to Christchurch that would get us into 9:10am.  What could have been a huge issue, turned into a minor hassle.  Thank you Air New Zealand!  I don't think an airline in the states would have ever done this for us.  So with that, here we are... off to Christchurch to drive to Mount Cook for a night before heading to Queenstown, which is where I am now.  Unfortunately it is 10:30pm and I have to shut down as the Internet cafe I am in is shutting down.  You'll have to hear about Mt. Cook and Queenstown later.