Hunter Valley

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Well the last few weeks has seen the best weather weve had since weve been here........ nearly 4 1/2 months now.....and we thought it was time we went up to the wine growing region to sample some of the local vino's! After booking the weekend....we found that there was a wine tasting weekend going on in the city and so we spent most of the sunday in Hyde park sampling wine in the sun, preparing ourselves for the real thing!

The Hunter Valley is 2 1/2 hours north of Sydney and after a long week we drove up to our accomodation which was situated on the Thalgara Vineyard.......a small family run boutique wine producer. An early start the next day saw us head round the corner to the Lindemans Vineyards to start our wine sampling...... unfortunately i was driving so i had to 'professionally' taste the wine by spitting it out!! Bex on the other hand was a true amateur knocking it back! We spent most of the morning sampling lots of different wines, cheeses and nibbles, returning to our gorgeous pad armed with lots of cheese and wine to keep us occupied. This also gave us the opportunity to ditch the car and really get to sample the local stuff.......and then kick back and relax in the sun!!

It wasnt all fun and games though......we did learn quite a bit about wine during the weekend, with most places quite keen for you to sample the same wines over a number of years, highlighting the differences the ageing of the wines has, and also the affects of the weather. Some good advice for you is to avoid 2001 and 2008 NSW wines due to the huge amounts of rain these seasons had!!

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