Barossa Valley
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2007
1
181
326
Trip End
May 13, 2009
Barossa Valley,
South Australia,
Australia
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The drive from Adelaide was short and fairly industrial. Fabrice took a phone call from home so I drove us all the way upto the Barossa Valley with no effort. We found a rest stop which is literally a truckers stop right next to the highway but its fine.
The Barossa Valley is one of the greenest places I have seen, amazing sunny days with rolling hills, nice trees and obviously fields of vines as far as the eye can see.
We saw a whispering wall which is a massive dam 9see the pics) from one side of the valley to the other
1-Whispering Wall
. you can talk really quietly one one side of the dam and hear it as if the person is right next to you when you are stood on the other side of the valley - increadible! the oldies around us loved it a lot more than us though!Yesterday we got up at 8ish and by 9.30 we were in the 1st winery. We rocked upto Jacobs Creek just because of their fame. this was really a visitors centre but we tried 6 or 7 wines and a fortified. In comparisson to our previous days endevours in wineries this wasnt up to much, the girl pretty much just resighted the labels and it wasnt much of an experiance, although the grounds are very impressive and it was still definatly worth a visit.
Next up was Rockford Winary - my favorite. Without us even asking the girl ran us through every red, white and fortified culminating in wines we shouldnt have even been tasting as they were $100+ a bottle - we wernt complaining! It was an amazin little cellar and everyone was so nice and helpful, we had a great couple of hours chatting to people - it was really nice, also some of the best wine I have tasted.
From there we went over to a viewpoint which was next to a sculpture garden, this was really pleasent and nice to get some food into us after all the wine before lunch
Whispering Wall
.Then we went to a place recomended to us by the girl at Rockfords, a chateau which had quite nice wines but nothing to shout about, there was an amazing cheese platter which we can shout about though - it was amazing smoked cheeses, blue cheese, chedar and brie - I was in heaven!
Then we drove up to Langmeils at 3pm - we didnt leave till 6.30pm. Once again we had everything and more of the things we should have been drinking - some botles $200+! In all I think I have tasted about 30 different wines today and fortified spirits and port etc - it was amazing and the people in Rockfords and Langmeil were so nice we were made to feel part of the family.
Fabrice had been spitting most of the wine out so he could drive us back to our slightly dodgy truckers top for another night of sleep. I was feeling terrible as the alcohol had made my cold get on top of me but it was definatly worth it!
Now today, as we ran out of time yesterday we are headding to Penfolds winery. Penfolds is also one of the best known in the world and we tasted there good wines, not as nice as most yesterday but still enjoyable. I spat out the wine today so I could drive us up rediculously straight roads with amazing green fields and nothing else all the way up to Handcocks lookout near Wilmington.
