4/14/10 (hunter valley)
Hunter Valley – Nelson Bay
One of the things I was really looking forward to doing was wine tasting in Australia. Over the years, Australian wine has become very popular in the states. The first experience I had with Australian wine was Yellow Tail, which I know isn’t a very good introduction but it had a kangaroo on the label and everyone has to start somewhere.
It was a warm day and relatively quiet in the valley even though it was a school holiday. There are about 180 wineries in this region so it was tough to decide which ones to try since we hadn’t heard of most of them. The area is well known for their shiraz and semillon. The guidebook suggested Drayton Winery, which is a family owned winery and the second oldest in the valley. Some of their grapes date back to the late 1860’s! We met Willy at Drayton who told us some very interesting stories about the Drayton family. There are several nearby wineries owned by other members of the Drayton family so as you can imagine the family is very well established here. We also learned that a few years back there was an explosion at the winery and unfortunately the winemaker passed away as a result of it. The assistant winemaker barely escaped by jumping into the dam (aka pond in the states) at the estate. Their tasting room was completely destroyed but they had someone who was in the construction business in the family and rebuilt it within a year. The wine from that year also survived and while they didn’t have the equipment to ferment the wine luckily there was other family members who owned wineries to help them out. What a story! Oh, and yes we did also try some of their wine. Port is also quite popular here and their tawny port was one of my top favorites from the day. Makes you all warm inside.
Willy suggested some other wineries for us to try. As we pulled up to Ivanhoe Winery there were about 10 geese blocking the entrance. I got out of the car to take a picture of them but they kept walking away. Must be camera shy. The lady at that winery also had a very funny story to tell. She took her daughter to the Australian Reptile Park that we had just been at the day before. Her daughter was feeding one of the kangaroos and she wasn’t feeding it quickly enough so the kangaroos stood up and started slapping her head back and forth with its hands. The little girl didn’t quite know what to do or what happened. It was like a scene from a cartoon. Hilarous! Oh, back to the wine. One of the most interesting wines we tried was their sweet shiraz. There are only a few wineries that make them. It is to be chilled a bit and goes well with pork, turkey or spicy food.
It was lunchtime so we stopped at the Hunter Valley Cheese Factory to sample some of their cheese. They had a semi-hard feta cheese that was delicious. We picked up a sample platter, which included crackers, cheese, chutney, and dried grapes and enjoyed our lunch on their picnic table. The dried grapes were still on the vine with seeds in it so I don’t think they are raisins yet but they were delicious.
In the afternoon we visited two other wineries based on recommendation from the lady at Ivanhoe, which coincidentally is also owned by a member of the Drayton family. We also did a beer tasting at Blue Tongue, which is a local valley beer. And there was the Hunter Valley Chocolate Factory that we had to check out too. I was hoping to see some chocolate in production but we were out of luck though that didn’t prevent us from trying their fudge and buying some chocolate for the road.
We were planning on making our way to the Blue Mountains but based on a recommendation from one of the ladies we met at a winery, we decided to drive up to Port Stephens. It is a common getaway for people who live in Sydney and supposed to be quite pretty. We stayed the night about an hour away from Port Stephens. When we pulled up to our spot a bird that Jon had seen from another campsite, which fascinated him, was perched on a ledge. It had a Mohawk hairdo and a bit aloof. Jon named him Stanley.
Australia, New South Wales in Daily Adventures
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