October 23-26
The next stop on our tour de Australia is Shiraz country: Barrosa Valley. We flew into Adelaide and then drove an hour out of town to our delightful airbnb in the small town of Angaston. We had a couple of days where we drank great wine, cooked in the airbnb and relaxed. Here’s a hilltop view overlooking a sculpture garden and the valley:
The Winery Rundown
Thorne-Clark: first winery and a big hit. We especially loved their big fancy bottles of Shiraz (no surprise we like the expensive ones).
Henschke: this winery sells $800 bottles of wine called Hill of Grace. We didn’t sample that wine. We did try some of their other stuff which was pretty good. They have extensive distribution in the US so we’ll be on the lookout for that when we’re back. Also, Hill of Grace can be found in the US if any of you are looking for a homecoming present for us.
Rockford Wines: this place was pretty cool – really solid wine and great atmosphere.
Lambert Estates: we liked these reds, but I was more pumped by the name and sent pictures off to my friend Cris to try to get a friends and family discount… no luck.
Also, Lamberts had all the hokey signs that I equal parts love and hate:
Langmeil: this was some of Michael’s favorite from the region.
David Franz: this winemaker is the son of Peter Lehman which is one of the really huge, old producers in the region. His dad sold the family winery some time ago to a huge corporation and now David runs a small winery. The space was beautiful and a great chance to relax and check out the view.
Yalumba: these wines were great, especially the Cab Sauv, and they had possibly the best rose of the trip.
Plus Yalumba has a coopery on site where they make their own oak barrels. How cool is that?
Elderton: this place had beautiful grounds and the wines were delicious, but the place was a bit pretentious.
Yelland and Papps: this was one of our favorite stops. It is a small shop with a husband and wife team. The wines were all easy drinking and super accessible. Plus we liked the guy a lot. It had more of a brewery vibe than a winery vibe.
Besides the great wine, I told you there was delicious food. We had a great Asian fusion dinner at a place called fermentAsian. Points for the clever name. This place had the highest recommendations from everyone we spoke to which is hilarious because before the recs we had actually walked by and I noted how terrible the place looked, based strictly on this sign:
The fish just looks gross. The recs were all absolutely correct and the food was incredible, but that picture is icky fish.
The best food we had though was the stuff Michael grilled for us:
That steak was so good! Plus Michael tried his hand at baking fresh bread and I tried my hand at baking boxed brownies. Neither were our best attempts.
We nabbed some pretty good fruit and vegetables while we were in town as well – some great strawberries, asparagus and rock melon which is what Aussies call cantaloupe. Why did the two melons have a long engagement?
We also got a few good runs in. The area was a bit hilly, but we did find a nice bike path.
Now there was a “danger falling rocks” sign that made me a little nervous to run through this area. But otherwise the views were great!
We had a wonderful time exploring the area. After the younger wine regions in New Zealand, it was cool to see some old vines again.
Look at how gnarly that is! Some of the vines in the region are over 130 years old. That’s old. This is our last wine region of the trip and although we’ve loved checking out all of the different styles of wines, we’re a bit burnt out on wine tasting. We’re ready for our next Australian adventure!
