Morning came a bit to early after our late night, but I felt mostly rested after sleeping like a log all night (the bed at the Four Seasons is very comfortable). Dad and I served as Pamela’s wake-up call and then headed down for a quick bite of granola cereal for breakfast.
At 8:30 we met both Pamela and our guide/driver for the day, Trevor. Trevor loaded us into a fairly comfortable four wheel drive SUV and set off for wine country. There was some confusion over names at first (Trevor started calling Pamela “Barbara,” and she started calling him “Henry”) but after the first few kilometers everyone was properly sorted.
The drive up was very scenic, even though we kept on the main highway to save time. Large swaths had been cut through sandstone mountains to make room for the road in spots. When we asked Trevor why one side of the bluff had so much water running down it and the other side was bone dry, he proved very knowledgeable and explained how water collected on internal deposits of clay and lime stone, only to trickle out. The other side was dry because it got the brunt of the sun everyday and dried out quickly after rainfall.
Trevor was very knowledgeable about everything from wine, to geography, to history. I’m really looking forward to our trip up to the Blue Mountains with him on Tuesday.
We arrived in wine country by 11:00 and Trevor knew his way around brilliantly. He and Dad negotiated several must-see-stops. The first was Audrey Wilkinson. They had several very nice whites, including a semillon and a very nice light-oaked chardonnay with a nose that smelled smoky, almost like a smoked sausage. The reds were (surprisingly) a little disappointing. However, the view from the winery was spectacular. The “cellar door” (in the US it would be called a tasting room) was on top of a hill overlooking the valleys on both sides. Trevor told us that during the summer when there are lots of leaves on the vines to provide shade, kangaroos come out and lie in the vineyards on the slope.
After that we went to Brokenwood winery. The girl working here got major brownie points because once she figured out how much Dad knew about wine she exchanged out small tasting glasses for real Bordeaux glasses, which definitely showcased the wine better. This was a very nice winery and the girl was very knowledgeable about exactly where the grapes for the various wines were grown, what kind of soil they grew in, and what that did for the flavor/smell of the wine. She poured us lots of different wines to compare.
Brokenwood was also nice because they have a US distributor, which means that we could actually order some wine shipped home. Most Australian wineries are unable to ship to America because the alcoholic control laws are different for every state so they need an importer to make it cost effective/possible to sell wine in the states.
After Brokenwood we took a break from wine and went to a shop called (honest-to-god here) “The Smelly Cheese Shop.”
As it turned out, it wasn’t actually that smelly (all the cheese had been wrapped up). We selected some triple cream brie to take to Pamela’s cousin’s for lunch. Her cousin, Janis, and her husband Adriaan had graciously invited us over for lunch.
They live on a unique property. It is a residential winery. Everyone who lives there owns a share of the grapes produced. Their house was just lovely. The view was beautiful, Adriaan’s garden was in full bloom, even in winter, and their kitchen reminded us of ours at home. Janis set a table outdoors on the patio in the shade. The weather was just perfect for an outdoor lunch, low 70s and breezy.
Janis downplayed her cooking, saying lunch was “only a light salad” but what she made was so tasty! The salad had prawns, pineapple, lychee fruit, cucumber, diced red onions, avocado, mayonnaise, mustard, cream, and a dash of olive oil. It was just delicious. This was accompanied by fresh bread from the market in Cessnoch and a selection of cheeses. Adriaan opened a couple of bottles of wine from their winery, Kelman, which were just delightful and refreshing (a semillon and a semillon/sauvignon blanc).
We only had an hour to spend with Janis and Adriaan, but they were simply lovely people. Janis is originally from Australia but Adriaan is actually Dutch, though he grew up in Brussels. They met while Janis was traveling, married, and lived together for many years in France. About five years ago they moved back to Australia and built their house on the winery. Now they’re thinking of moving in closer to Sydney, though they still love their winery.
Trevor collected us again and took us to two more wineries, Pepper Tree and Tower Winery. Pepper Tree was in a lovely spot, but their wines were the weakest offerings of the day (although they had a lovely merlot with lots of guts and far more tannin than I ever associate with merlot -- if all merlots were like that I might drink more). The best red wine of the day was actually one of Dad’s experiments at this winery. There was a cabernet from Adelaide with a really great structure and a cabernet/merlot blend from the Hunter Valley that had a very pleasing vanilla nose. Dad made a 50/50 mixture of the two and ended up with a really great wine.
Tower had some nice reds that were more what Dad was looking for in an Australian shiraz. What we discovered today is that the Hunter Valley’s styles for all their varietals is very consistent. A semillon from Audrey Wilkinson would taste very similar to a semillon from Tower, and so on. The way the Hunter Valley makes its shiraz is not exactly to Dad’s taste. They’ve gotten away from the huge fruit and alcohol, and end up with a wine that is more about cherries and bright fruit. I think I liked them slightly better than he did, although I consider they styles of Australian shiraz two completely different wines.
Hunter Valley shiraz would go very well with food, especially hard to match dishes, like pickled rhubarb (which we actually had last night) or cherry cobbler.
The traffic getting back into Sydney in the afternoons can be beastly, so Trevor warned us that we needed to leave the valley by about 2:30. We dropped Pamela off at her new apartment on Breakfast point, just north of Sydney, and then returned to the hotel.
Trevor will be taking us to the Blue Mountains next Tuesday, but I was struck by how trusting Australians are, because he did not require us to pay for today’s excursion, but just shrugged and said we could pay for both next week. Australia is such a wonderful place...
Dinner tonight was a low-brow affair. Dad and I walked a few blocks over towards The Rocks, a shopping and dinning district that is very trendy. We found an Italian place that had outdoor seating (with heaters) and decided we were in the mood for pizza.
All in all a very good day.
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