Down in the valley
19.02.2011 - 21.02.2011
Mmmm, what a great couple of days! We’ve been avoiding all vineyards during the trip to save ourselves for the wonders of the Barossa Valley (for the UK folk it is home of Jacob’s Creek, Penfolds, Wolf Blass etc). As you would expect the 2 days we spent here consistently purely of eating and drinking. The famous Maggie Beer’s farm shop and the Barossa Valley Cheese company had us pretty set for solids so we went in search of some great bottles of vino on our bikes. We cycled to about 6 or so smaller and independent vineyards over 2 afternoons, and we must have looked pretty funny coming back from them - slightly wonky and very happy! Our 2 favourite vineyards were Rockford and Charles Melton (although it may have been the $50+ bottles of wine that they kept throwing at us here that made us particularly enamoured of this tasting room!)
Other highlights were driving to a farmer’s market, the Jacob’s Creek visitor’s centre and the opening of the first vintage of the year by the Barons of Barossa where they used a 100 year old grape crushing machine to turn the grapes into juice that they passed around to the crowd and discussed what type of wine it would be best for. We also visited the Whispering Wall – a dam near the Barossa that is famous for its concave shape that has amazing acoustic abilities. Mark stood at one end of the dam and whispered to me and I could here him crystal clear, metres away! I hope the photo below gives you some appreciation of how far away he was! Some other ladies came and stood with me and thought Mark was very amusing as he declared his love for me and started singing Cold Chisel!
We have left the Barossa now, slightly hungover, with a little less money in our pockets but with a far greater and better appreciation of wine, the processes involved in making it and what particular vintages we like.
And into the outback we go,
xxxx
Posted by mapfulford 24.02.2011 18:24 Archived in Australia
