Hunter Valley - A Lesson in Belligerence

Surveying his new surroundings empire...

Before I begin the story of my latest alcohol related escapades, I’d like to point out that I’m going to try something different with the blog. I’m going to try and integrate pictures and text, just so my “faithful” readers won’t just get hit by a wall of text followed by a really random photo dump. Despite Blogspot not being particularly user-friendly with regard to integrating photos into text (the photos just get dumped onto the top backwards… an absolute nightmare to sort through), for you guys, anything! Tell me if you prefer this, otherwise I’ll just do it like I usually do it, just to save myself the pain of sitting on the library’s computers for a whole day and using up all of the university’s bandwidth.

I went on a wine tasting tour with my family the last time I was in Sydney. I don’t remember too much about it, not because I was particularly inebriated (being 15 at the time), but mostly because I feel like the real wine tasting experience afforded by the trip would’ve been lost on a young me. Despite being a bit of a food snob at that point, I figure that suggesting “wine” and “tour” would’ve called to mind the yearly trip down to the Niagara region that I dreaded as a youth. I also dare anyone to remember specific details about a trip a quarter of a lifetime ago. But I digress; now at the ripe age of 20 I could now legally enjoy the finer things in life. The chance to try good wine that wasn’t $2.50/litre goon may have also influenced my decision.

Here are some photos from down Memory Lane, on the corner of Nostaligia Avenue. Ignore the pretentious douchebag in the beanie, trying to be a wine snob.
Last weekend my friends and I decided to try our hand at being sophisticated and classy by going for a wine tour in Hunter Valley. Although the reputation of the boxed wine had turned most of us off from Australian wine, we thought it would only be fair to try the good stuff before dismissing Australian wine as an abomination against nature and God herself. Also, the prospect of free wine and a cheese tasting sold us. We opted to take a tour, not only because most of the wineries are closed off to public access without tours, but so we could get a better sense of which wineries were particularly good. Despite being forced to wake up at some ungodly hour and operating on a ridiculously tight schedule, the trip was pretty good and I’d recommend doing it. It was about $89, but I figure next time I may just rent a car to go.

So Jake, Andy and I dragged our butts out of bed 6am to get dressed and pack up our goodies for the day. I decided wisely to make a lunch the day earlier, and just had everyone go in on it (Japanese Style Chicken Caesar Salad with Bacon).

Andy being a tourist... reoccuring trend!

Our friend Frankie decided to be extremely fashionably late, but eventually the tour bus managed to pick her up from Circular Quay. We took the two hour drive, with a nice little pit stop in between, to Hunter Valley and got a bit of the history of the area and of Sydney – just go to Wikipedia to get that story.
We started our wine tour at Savannah Wineries. It looked like a little shack in the middle of no where, but it was fantastic with some really nice wines. I discovered my love for Moscato, Semillion, Port and Dessert wines. Despite not really being much of a dessert person, I’ve actually got a bit of a sweet tooth when it comes to wine. I had one that tasted like fresh honey. I started thinking about sipping it with grilled Halloumi… mmm! I actually asked the proprietor about his thoughts of Canadian wine… apparently he doesn’t think much about it. Literally didn’t know we made wine. Shocking! A good start to the day, although less could be said for my British friend. I guess Frankie had a few too many straight from the get go… the picture explains it all:

Providing early opportunities for photo ops and becoming the 11am spectacle.

Our next destination was Iron Gate Winery, a pretty classy place, and arguably my favourite just because of the abundance of free food. Lots of delicious cheeses and then some amazing fudge to go with some of the wine… fantastic. The building itself was pretty swanky, reminding me of pictures of Tuscan summer homes that you can rent out. Perhaps on the next blog. Anyways, more importantly we also got to sample some fantastic wines here that I couldn’t tell you the names of, but nonetheless, if you’re in the area, I’d recommend checking this place out.We also got a bit of a tour of the wine making process. I think I’ve done enough wine tours of the Niagara-on-the-Lake to outline the entire process back to front, although I suppose the strange climate of Australia makes the wine making process a little more interesting.

We took a short break for lunch and we ended up going to the same picnic place that I went too back when I was 15. We did a little tour of all the cool little shops that they had to offer and, since we became such wine connoisseurs at this point, decided to go to a bottle shop and get a bottle of white wine for lunch. We got a couple cheap plastic wine glasses and then polished off some of the Japanese Chicken Caesar which we put between bread ($1.09 a loaf?! Yes please!) for some impromptu sandwiches.

If nothing else, I'm just a sentimental old dude.
(See above for old photo!)

After taking an incredibly cheesy picture of myself; we hopped back on the bus and went to try some deliciously stinky, runny cheese. The lady serving us the cheese took a liking to Jake, which was pretty funny. Nothing makes wine taste better than stinky cheese. Unfortunately less photos, because at this point I just wanted to cram as much cheese and wine down my greedy gullet as fast as possible.
The last winery we went to was Earnest Hill Winery, which along with Iron Gate is one of the few wineries in the Hunter Valley that still produces their own grapes on premises. By this point I was pretty knackered (to borrow a British-ism), and a bit tipsy from having lots of wine and being pretty dehydrated. Although I wasn’t as bad as Frankie, who by our 20th-25th sample was acting a bit belligerent and fell asleep on the bus. And, after a whole day, I managed to find a wine that reminded me of goon and made me (instinctively) spit out the wine. We took a couple scenic pictures and then started our long journey back home.

Andy is clearly stoked on life.

On our way back, I spent about 20-30 minutes trying to get one particular photo, which thankfully Frankie managed to get that I will now shamelessly steal. Using my camera on a bouncing bus while on the wrong side of the road... many bad photos later I got this!

Before we went home, we decided to go to Kings Cross for dinner and had some delightfully cheap $10 rump steaks. Even though mine was a little overcooked (to put it lightly), still very good and for $10, not bad. Next time I'll just ask for an ultra rare steak. Despite being known as the Red Light District (I may or may not have been propositioned a couple times walking up and down the street late at night), still really sweet and I'll definitely recommend this place for the sights and sounds alone.
So right now I’m listening to John Mayer and Taylor Swift via Itunes and Koki is making some sort of insane Sino-Japanese concoction for dinner. I’m also introducing Andy to the Arkells and the Stills (and getting an earful of the Libertines). As Koki would say, “Iine” (pron. E-nay).