Barossa valley Wine tasting

Just north of Adelaide is the Barossa Valley, mainly famous for its fantastic red wines and also the fact that this is where Jacob's Creek and Wolf Blass wine come from. Now, we're not saying that these wines are bad, they make some fantastic wines there too, but they rarely gets shipped, and the ones that are are priced fairly comfortably inside the high-to-extortionate region. We chose to do an organised one day tour, based on our limited time in this huge country, but given more time it would have been fantastic to stay at bed and breakfasts in the valley and hop between them at a leisurely pace. But that does not mean we had a bad experience, quite the opposite, the organised tour features a very well informed driver who during the drive first gave a brief history of the settlement of Adelaide by the British. He then went on to the world wars and the influx of people from mainly Germany and Italy and how the Germans settled the Barossa valley and started to grow wine. This history lesson was great and not something you'd have easily picked up on your own by chatting to the locals.

The tour was scheduled to stop at four vineyards, the first one, "Kiels", the driver oddly labeled as a cafe where you could also try their wine in their cellar door. We prioritised the wine and while the others piled into the cafe for morning tea and a piece of cake we started chatting with the owner and judging by the newspaper clippings on display she was an award winning wine maker. We tried their reds on display and were very impressed by their three Sihraz wines but were blown away by their Ports (or fortified Wines they now have to label it). Obviously the locals are too, since when we were standing there sipping our samples a man and a woman came in to restock their port supply. They returned four two-litre empties and bought four new ones, at roughly $6.50 a litre. That is roughly 40 SEK or £3.50. And remember this was no cheap tasting plonk but some of the best port wine we have ever tasted. As we were standing there saying, 'now that is the way to buy wine, just go to the local award winning vineyard and get it straight from the casks' the owner and the customers were happily chatting away about how early summer has come and other little bits of local news. As they were about to leave she stuffed a bottle of their mid-range white into the bags and said something along the lines of 'stick this in the fridge as well, it will cool you down nicely'.
We need more vineyards and less strict alcohol regulations in Sweden I think...

After popping into the cafe to get our coffee and cake we got on the bus and headed to Langmeil vineyard, where we were met by a cousin of the family run vineyard with a history of over 120 years. Not the same family as when it started though. This visit started out with a little history about the vineyard itself and a 15 minute talk on what makes a great wine, which all boiled down to : its all in the vines. He was talking very enthusiastically about how the best quality wines come from grapes from old vines, and how the industrial sized production of the larger vineyards destroys the vines early, after only 30 years. In smaller scale vineyards on the other hand, where the vines are pruned manually they can last for hundreds of years, though they will yield less and less grapes as time passes. After a quick visit into the fields to see these old vines in the blazing sun, we headed inside to sample the goods, and it was truly amazing. They had a huge selection and we dove straight into the heavy reds section of the list, that is after all the reason we came to this particular area. They had a great Grenache wine and a couple of Grenache/Shiraz blends that were really really nice (all for around or under $15 a bottle). The masterpieces though were the Shiraz wines they make of their really old vines, we liked them so much we had to buy a bottle from the top shelf to consume in a few years time.

After our splurge we went on to a vineyard, who's name escapes us both, for a lunch of very tasty Kangaroo steak and Sticky Date (toffee) pudding, and some more wine of course. This one was nestled in a stunning setting with fields dropping off a hill and with the valley peaks far in the distance. Absolutely gorgeous, but you'll see that in the photo... The wines however, though very nice and incredibly drinkable, did not reach the heights of the previous two. They did had a sparkling red that was quite good though which some of the ladies on the tour were raving about, but that was as far as it went.



After that it was time to go to a big one the biggest actually - Wolf blass, who can bottle a staggering 26'000 bottles an hour apparently. This tasting was more organised and held at their large visitors centre, which obviously cater for a lot of visitors. There was a menu and the guy behind the counter was explaining each wine and each one was more 'delicious', 'beautiful', 'rich' and 'full-bodied' than the last. We were treated to a few of their upper ranges of wines though, the ones above the yellow and red labels, that doesn't make it across to Europe. Though these were quite good, we still preferred the small scale wines we tasted before lunch, though some of the people on the tour did pay a little extra to try a sample from the top ($150 a bottle) range and they claimed that it was the best of the bunch, all day. I do believe them, we seemed to have very similar taste throughout the day, but $150 a bottle is quite a steep price, no matter how nice it is, so I think on our budget we are better off without that temptation. Besides, we already had our splurge bottle safely tucked away in our bag.


The next day we spent roaming around the town in the morning and happened upon the finish of the Global Green challenge, where university students make and drive Solar-powered vehicles from Darwin to Adelaide, through the red Centre (on the very road we are driving on as I am typing this). We lounged around the area for a while and listened to their stories and as they explained to others in the know about how they had built their cars, which solar cells they are using, voltage etc, etc. It is really extraordinary what these guys are doing, they travelled from Darwin to Adelaide in three days, roughly the same time we'll make in our car and reached speeds of over 100 Km/hr and its all built by hand by undergrads. Though there were stories like 'are you using those batteries? Oh, we were going to but one exploded and nearly took our car with it, so we decided not to...', so while we might not go out and buy one tomorrow, it is certainly a thing of the near future. Once our inquisitive minds were at ease we hopped on a bus and went to Tennyson beach, which is a little bit out of the way and less populated. This was a Saturday after all, so we expected a minor invasion of the more accessible beaches. An added benefit of this beach is that it has a lot of sand dunes lining the back of it which makes it not only extremely beautiful but you can also find shelter from the wind, unless it is blowing straight in of course. The water was still cold but in the 30+ heat it was just perfect and it gave us a stunning sunset. We count this as another day well spent in Oz.

While on the beach we decided to hire a car and drive up to Uluru, since we have until next Sunday (a full week!!) until we fly out to Cairns. So at this moment, are driving to Pt Augusta through vast farmland which definitely reminds us that space is not something that Australia is lacking (the farms are huge, roughly the size of countries like, say Singapore!!). This will be a quick stopover and maybe a visit to the Wodlata outback centre in the morning, which apparently is a great Aboriginal culture experience.

Adelaide has treated us very well, but we are quite excited about our road-trip so we are leaving with a smile on our faces.