Hunter Valley Wine Tour

For our Hunter Valley Wine Tour we were picked up at 7:15am at our hotel.  It seemed like an absurdly early hour to me but it's a 2 hour drive to the wine region from Sydney and we had quite an itinerary planned for the day.

There were 12 of us on the tour plus our affable tour guide, Graham, who was also the driver.  Here is our nice comfortable ride for the day:

Our first tasting of the day was at Lambloch Winery at an astonishing 10:15am.  Luckily I had been up for four hours so it felt like it was lunchtime and somewhat acceptable to be drinking vino.  It was after noon in New Zealand so I figured it was okay.  Here is a photo from the scenic tasting room at Lambloch:

We tasted six wines at Stop #1:  Semillon, Verdelho, two Shiraz, and two Moscato.  The Shiraz was the winner of the group.  First bottle purchase of the day...

Our next winery was Oakvale.  As we parked in the driveway, Graham pointed out quite a few kangaroos bounding around amongst the vines!!  Now, that's something I did not expect to see today!  Very cool.

At Oakvale, we went to wine church and listened to this winemaker (consultant actually) talk with passion about the art, science and life of making good wine.  I, for one, was inspired by the sermon.  I gained great respect for him when I found out that he lives in Sonoma, consults for wineries on five continents, and has been involved with many wineries we know and like including Flowers, Kistler and La Crema.

The Chardonnay at this place was outstanding.  Bottle #2 quickly acquired!  Suitcases are starting to fill up...

Midday, we had a gourmet lunch at a brewery and right next door was a local wine tasting establishment that poured for multiple wineries.  We tried a few here after lunch but I was not overwhelmed.

Our third winery visit was to Tintilla Estate.  This was a beautiful property.  It's a young winery (less than 20 years old) and produces limited quantities right now (i.e., you would never find these wines in the US; same holds true for the first two wineries of the day).

The woman standing up is from Buffalo, NY, of all places.  Very weird.  Here are some of the other people in our group:

Here are some of their Shiraz vines:

Our final winery visit was to James Estate.  I was amazed to find an excellent Cabernet Sauvignon here, as well as the usual suspect, Shiraz.  Four more bottles for the suitcase.

As a bonus, this winemaker is a serious mountain biker and they were selling bike jerseys in their tasting room.  I like to get biking jerseys from different countries I visit and this one seemed perfect, matching my love for wine with that of biking (the name of his winery is on the jersey too).

We had a couple more quick stops in the afternoon.  One stop at a chocolate shop and the other at a cheese shop.  I hear the cheese was good but I wouldn't know.  I managed to sneak over to the wine shop next door and tasted some great stuff from Tempus Two winery.

Ok.  Definitely enough wine for today but the Hunter Valley did not disappoint!  Nice job, Graham!