Wine tasting in the Hunter Valley

Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Fri 9 Jan 2015 06:56
On the road again! This time we were off to do some wine tasting in the Hunter Valley, about 2 hours west of Sydney. Alex's flight was delayed, and he arrived early on Wednesday morning, rather than Tuesday night but he was raring to go after a good breakfast at the hotel.
On the way we we took the long, scenic tourist route rather than the motorway so it took a little longer, but the scenery was fantastic. We passed through some of the more outlying vineyard areas and stopped for coffee in Wollombi, a small town on the old convict built road through the valley.
When we arrived at the site the first job as always was to pitch the tent. Alex also had his tent, which proved a challenge beating in mind that like most blokes he has an aversion to reading a manual. Once John had set him straight over a few 'minor' issues, ie trying to use the pole holders as tent pegs and wondering why they kept popping out, he was on his way. The ground here is so unbelievable hard, that the pegs were a nightmare to get in - goodness knows how we will get them out again, we also bent beyond hope at least 5 pegs between the 2 tents.
Tent up, Alex got on with sorting out his bed. We had bought him an air bed for the princely sum of $10 (about £5), which was such poor quality it had a repair kit included. We looked for the kit in the box and eventually found a small square of paper, which was clear plastic on one side, about 2 inches square with some repair instructions on the back - this was a pice of sticky back plastic - repair kit found, God help him if he needs a repair!!

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Alex wondering why his tent is so much smaller than ours!

The wine tasting was a bit of an epic adventure. We left the campsite at 9.30am and arrived home at about 6pm. We visited 5 'cellar doors' tasting between 7 and 9 wines at each. Even thought they were obviously small amounts, by lunchtime we had been to three wineries and they were definitely starting to add up, then came a 4 course lunch, with a tasting of 3 wines, per course, and then the final 2 cellars. At the start of the day we were drinking the wine we were given, glass for glass, but by then end we were getting a bit more choosy, even dumping some straight into the bucket! Lunch was in a great spot, with an amazing view. The temperature here is hot, hot, getting up to about 38 degrees during the day. The evenings have been somewhat cooler as where we are staying there always seems to a stiff breeze blowing!

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Making a slightly delayed but very important New Years resolution

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The view from our lunch table across the valley

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Vineyards

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Alpacas grazing in the fields - the wool is very popular over here but, as it is usually made into a jumper, I don't think we will have much need for it!

Wine production here in the Hunter Valley is very much different to what we expected. Our recent experience in France did not prepare us at all for the way that wine is made here. There are far fewer rules and regulations and much more experimentation between grapes and even areas. Some of the wineries we visited bring grapes in from other areas to mix with their Hunter Valley grapes to make wine. So long as the percentage of grapes from outside the area does not exceed 15%, it does not have to be mentioned on the label.
All in all the trip to the Hunter Valley was very interesting. The wines are not really sold outside of this area though, most the producers make very small amounts which are mainly sold to their club members, or to people like us doing a tasting trip. It is not the best wine producing area in Australia, the most famous/widely known wineries here are Lindemans and Rosemount who actually import most of their grapes from different areas and then sell in huge amounts overseas. The wines are also not really to our taste. Of all the ones we tried, there were very few that we actually liked. We bought a couple of bottles, two which were the vineyards unlabelled cheap stuff, which was one of the nicest we tasted and a sweet desert wine, but most were average at best. I think we will get much better wines when we get to the Barossa Valley near Adelaide and the Margaret River area in Perth.
On our second day here John and I went for a drive around the region while Alex relaxed by the pool. There really isn't much else to do other than taste wine here. There are good restaurants but they are very spaced out and a long way from where we were staying.
Our next stop is the beautiful Blue Mountains area where we will hopefully get the chance to do some exploring and hiking for a couple of days, before heading off to the beach for a bit of sun prior to going back to Sydney.