January 24 - Clare and Barossa Valley
Australian wines have really grown in popularity in North America over the past few years. The Barossa Valley is one of the larger producers of Aussie wine and for a couple of years we've really wanted to get here.
Upon arriving at Taylors Wines, we decided that we should have a little snack since our breakfast was already a couple of hours behind us. Gerald had just started to cut an apple in half when, "Ooooooouuuuuuucccccchhhhh!" He shrieked, dropped the knife and quickly grabbed his hand. Yup, he cut his middle finger at the top joint. He didn't really appreciate it when I said that we'd have to bandage it up in such a way to prevent him from bending it. Can you imagine Gerald sipping on lovely red wine with his middle finger saluting everyone?
Anyways, we took out our first aid kit. Hard to believe that in almost five months, this is the first time we've had to open the iodine and use a bandage. Pretty good track record. A quick first aid session in the public toilet had him back on track ready to sip away.
Taylors Wines is located in the Clare Valley, which was a bit of a detour en route to the Barossa. Three reasons brought us here: first, we remember having had this wine on our last trip here, secondly, Taylor is Gerald's mom's maiden name, and third, our oldest nephew is named Taylor. I mean really, fate brought us here.
The wine was as lovely as we remembered. Shortly we were back on the road heading to Barossa. First stop: Wolf Blass. This is one of our favourite wines back home. We were really happy to find many wines that we recognized and also quite a few that were only available here in Australia or just here at the winery. To say the least, we were not disappointed. One of the best parts of this visit was the friendly lady pouring the wine for us. Like many of the others, she was very knowledgeable, but she had such a fun-loving way about talking about wine. We really hated to leave, but another big winery, Jacob's Creek, was calling us over.
We were surprised to find that these wines were some of the cheapest that we'd come across in all of our winery visits to date. Seems to me that these aren't generally that cheap at home; must be a good mark-up. The wines were decent, but it was the view that was really spectacular. The north wall was made entirely of glass and looked out over the Barossa Valley, across the vineyards and to the hills beyond. It was great to see so much green after having travelled through wheat fields and drier areas.
A stop at the visitor bureau resulted in us following the suggestion of the helpful attendant, and we were off on a beautiful drive up into the aforementioned hills. A lookout at the top of the hill provided a beautiful view of the whole valley. Hopefully one of the pictures will do it justice. It was really breathtaking. We wished that we had planned a picnic up here. We would have loved to sit here for a couple of hours.
The drive back into Nuriootpa brought us through a more forested area and then back into vineyards again. This brings us to our check-in. I don't think that we could have possibly found a better place to spend two nights in the Barossa.
Our "hostel" was a two-bedroom home. Each bedroom had an ensuite. The two bedrooms were on either side of the building, with a common living room and kitchen in the middle section. The indoors were great, but it was the picnic table under the eaves of the roof that really made this stay fabulous. Within twenty steps of this picnic table were the vines. Essentially, we stayed right in a vineyard. You can't get closer to the Barossa than this.
Tonight, the other guests were a dad and his daughter visiting from Ottawa (he emigrated from Australia thirty years ago). We haven't really met that many Canadians along the way and sharing this small home with them felt like being at home. We had a wonderful night visiting with them, enjoying the outdoors until the wind came up and made it a bit too chilly to be outside. What really made it feel like "home" was that despite having each made our own dinners, we washed up the dishes and cleaned the kitchen together. It was so nice.
January 25 - Barossa Valley
We hopped in the car to hit a couple wineries that were a little out of the way: Two Hands and Barossa Valley Estates. Again, really loved their wines and especially loved all the information about wines that both hosts offered us. Now, if only we could remember everything we've been learning about wines. Maybe we should be bringing along a notebook? One thing that we liked about Two Hands was that Gerald was able to compare two types of wines from two regions yet made by the same wine maker. It is really cool to taste the difference a different environment has on the wine. This is called parallel tasting. He also enjoyed comparing two Shiraz wines from the same vineyard, but from different years. Again, big differences. This is when we could see just how much effect weather has on the wines.
Our last stop with the car was at Maggie Beer's. This lady has built up a little business based on foods from the Barossa specializing in unique jams, cookbooks, ice cream, chocolates, and even some wines under the label of Beer Brothers. She has used verjuice, a juice which comes from the first press of grapes and is used as a substitute for virgin olive oil, to create some lovely and unique recipes. We stuck around for her 2pm cooking demonstration and were a bit disappointed to find that she'd taken the day off and her assistant was cooking today. I guess you can't really blame her. After all, she has been filming quite a bit lately for her new television series to begin broadcasting in February.
As quick as we could, we headed back to the hostel to pick up our rental bicycles. Actually, this is what drew us to this hostel in the first place. We'd wanted to take a couple bicycles to explore the wineries and this hostel had rentals. Fate? I think so. We hopped on the bikes and headed for a couple wineries that were close-by. Okay, so in the end, we estimate that we biked about 15km in 35 degrees Celcius heat. I guess they weren't that close-by in the end.
Our first stop was at Richmond Grove where we finally came to appreciate the idea of a crisp, white wine on a hot summer afternoon. As we mentioned before, we're really trying to broaden our horizons and try to appreciate whites. Well, this did it. After mopping the sweat off our faces (and Gerald's head!), we indulged in a couple of rieslings and sauvignon blancs. That's it! We finally get it. White wines do indeed go down nicely on a hot summer's day. Once cooled down, we most certainly appreciated their reds as well.
This was kind of fun...not worrying about who was driving. Well, not a car anyways. Actually, a visit to a winery will probably amount to about one full glass of wine. Its not that they're chinsy on their portions, it's just that if you want to really appreciate a few different wines at each place, this is about the perfect amount to consume.
Even though our bikes only have two wheels each, we went "four-bying" and headed 'cross country to the next winery. A cute little bridge hopped a tiny creek. We crossed over the grass to a little path to find ourselves at Peter Lehmann Wines.
Again, this is an award winning winery. He's really into the arts and has really artsy labels, which is kind of what drew us here in the first place. One cool thing that we noticed here was that they sold their tawny by the litre. Our hostess explained that it was an old tradition here in the Barossa. People have been buying their tawny (port) for years in bulk. They bring it home to their own casks and may add some other ingredients to make it their own home brew. Neat idea! It was reassuring in a way that a large winery still made it possible for this old tradition to continue.
Our third winery was Cockatoo Ridge. We'd seen their label in the shops, but couldn't remember if we'd seen it at home. Guess we hadn't since they only export their "Yellow Cab" label to the states, New York to be precise...get it? Yellow Cab? One thing that drew me here was that cockatoos are still seen here in the wild and Gerald has a great story about a cockatoo from our last trip here. Maybe, I'll leave some space for him to add this story right here.
Come on Gerald....write it! It'll be funny.
Gerald -
In August of 2001, we were in northern Queensland after a few days of diving in the Great Barrier Reef. Not being able to fly for 24 hours after Scuba diving, I had decided to book into a quaint little B and B that I had read about called Marae Lodge. It so happened that the owner had a beautiful golden crested cockatoo. Taking interest in the large bird, she asked if I would want to hold it. I really wasn't sure, but Tamalyn persuaded me. Moments after talking back and forth with the cockatoo, it decided that a bathroom break was in order. Unfortunately, cockatoos aren't potty trained and I ended up with a good chunk of cockatoo droppings just inside my left thigh. The owner was so horrified, she put the bird away, grabbed a wet towel, and started to rub the bird pooh! I guess I wasn't sure which was more embarrassing, having the bird pooh on my pants or having the owner try to wash away the droppings from very close to my nether region!
Back to the present. We had packed a light picnic to eat along the way, but never really found an ideal place to enjoy it. This may be why we were feeling a little light-headed upon returning "home". Our Canadian friends had checked out this morning and it appeared that no one else had checked in. What? Time alone....really alone? This would be the first time alone, with our own kitchen, living room, and outdoor area since July 4th. How many days does that make, I wonder?
Suffice it to say that we made the most of our "space". Our evening was spent enjoying the lovely evening sunlight, the fantastic and long-lasting dusk, the windless and warm evening at the picnic table, a few bottles of the wines that we'd accumulated the past couple of days, a great lamb dinner, music off our laptop, but most importantly, we loved spending the evening together.
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