Barossa Winery Tours
So today we started off late. We were collected by Tracie our guide for the day (okay more like a private chauffeur who knew a lot about wine).
Now before I go any further I would like to clear up something that has irritated me for a while. Over here in Australia and New Zealand they refer to places that make wine as wineries. Back home we would call them vineyards. It was pointed out to me that these are both correct as the vineyard is where the grapes grow (of course!) and the winery is where they make the stuff. Oh, the cellar door is where they sell it.
Before I digress any further I shall get back on track. Yalumba was just up the road so we started there first. A big room awaited us along with an impressive array of wines.. 30-40 in fact. Thankfully or guide helped us through the process of tasting the wines, some good, some bad. They are actually listed in the books in order of tasting which I didn’t know. Any how after several sips swirls and the occasional swallow we left with about six bottles wine each. We could buy a bottle of wine here for $9.95 that tasted a thousand times better than any of that Jacobs Creek etc… We were even introduced to a sparkling red wine that is generally consumed with a good English Breakfast!!! It sounded too good an excuse to us so we got some.
We headed off to Kaesler next. There we again sampled and chatted away to the hosts tasting some great and not so great wines. I thought the Voigner from here was pretty good along with what they called ‘Rizza’ a very sweet Riesling (this in fact was too sweet at first but after a while it grows on you) We left here a and headed the the Schild Estate for another tasting and lunch.
I didn’t buy anything at Schild as it all tasted pretty lame.. either that or my taste buds were knackered. We then headed off to another place which again did not hold much in store… apart from Andreas’ 5L of port.
We finally left and headed off the Kellermiester, just up the road. We were greeted by a very beautiful girl who turned out to be a sales rep just chilling out before Xmas. We chatted for a while and tasted some great wines. By the time we had finished it was 5pm!! Andreas & I bought about thirty bottles from this place.
By the time we got back to the motel we were pretty merry and carrying almost 50-60 bottles of wine totaling upto $3000. It is certainly worth doing and I fully recommend coming here and if you have chance a big wallet and lots of time…
I will post a list of the wines we purchased later on when I return.
