The Wine Tour

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Promptly at 10am Trevor arrived in his 1935 Auburn Phaeton, or convertible. The car had been purchased new by Trevor’s grandfather and used in the family businesses for many years before being stored in a barn. In 1995 Trevor began the restoration and started doing tours in 1997. In addition to the tours, Trevor does some mechanical maintenance and other work for some of the wineries and is well known in the community. The day was a bit cool, but sunny and dry, so off we went to the first of five wineries we planned on visiting.

Yalumba is a large family owned operation and is one of the few wineries which actually make their own casks. We stopped in the cask shop first. There was no active production going on but we could see the raw wood (mostly from California and Hungary) and a number of casks in various stages of the manufacturing process. This is an aspect of wine production you don’t often see so this was a nice plus. There is a large tasting room which we had to ourselves (it was a bit early, but that didn’t slow us down) and Yalumba has a wide selection of wines, much of which is available in the US. We liked one of their Viognier’s and a Cabernet Shiraz blend.

In the Barossa, the vineyards are separately owned from the wineries, but the wine makers and growers tend to work closely together year after year. In addition, there are a number of sub-regions in the Valley. The one most commonly seen is the Eden Valley which is the north (dryer) end of the Barossa. Before the second winery, we drove to a lookout where we could see most of the valley and get our bearings. Trevor, another Aussie with the gift of gab, chatted up everybody in the car park.

Rockford was the second winery of the day. They are a very small operation whose niche is producing wines using old style technology. While we were there, they were crushing grapes in a belt driven wooden crusher identical to that used in the 19^th century. As you can see from the picture, there was a guy with a pitchfork in the truck loading grapes into the feed hopper of the crusher one forkful at a time. Very old school! Our favorite wine here was the Basket Pressed Shiraz. Rockford doesn’t have a US distributor, but you can order from their website for worldwide shipping which adds about $250 per case to the cost of the wine.

Charles Melton, who produces only rose and red wines, was almost across the road from Rockford and has a slightly different arrangement than most tasting rooms because they have a big table you can sit at rather than standing up to a bar. This tends to be conducive to more chatting with staff and generally a more leisurely experience. Melton makes a couple of somewhat unique wines using the Grenache grape. The first is a Rose which wasn’t the sweet rose we see in the States, but a dry crisp wine which would be nice with some bread and cheese on a warm day. They also make a sparkling version of the same wine, Brut Peche, which was also very nice. We also tasted a number of very nice Cabernets and Shiraz’s which should soon be available in the US. If fact, they said their US label had just been approved by the US government.

Next up was a cooperative of very small winemakers called the “Artisans of the Barossa”. Seven individual winemakers joined together and operate a tasting room in a very contemporary setting on a vineyard in the center of the Valley. Each day, two or three winemakers are featured and on occasion they actually come to the tasting room and work the counter. It may have been because we were there with Trevor, but Mel the tasting room manager set up some comparisons between similar wines from the different winemakers for us. We ended up trying seven different wines from six of the winemakers. All were reds and mostly blends of varietals. One of our favorites was “The Moonlight Run” from Massena Winery which was a blend of Grenache, Shiraz, Mataro and Cinsault grapes. The Cinsault smoothed everything out and made for a nice rich wine. While we still could, we moved to one of the tables overlooking the vineyard for a lunch of local products. Olives, cheeses, sausage, smoked chicken, chutney, bread, crackers and of course wine. All locally grown and produced. A very good lunch, although not likely the best for our arteries.

Rusden was the last winery of the day. This is another small family business, so small in fact that Dennis, the patriarch of the family, was working the tasting room. Since they are a bit off the beaten path and Dennis seemed to know Trevor quite well, we had a very personal tasting. Unusual for the Barossa, they produce a Zinfandel from their own vines. Since we like Zins anyway, that was a must try and was outstanding. We also liked their “Black Guts” Shiraz a lot. Dennis gave us the name of their US importer in Chicago and a wine store in the Chicago suburbs which stocks their wine. We will have to make this another stop for our Midwest trip this summer.

After five wineries and probably 25 kinds of wine, our last stop for the day was a coffee farm produce shop run by lady named Maggie Beers. She has become a famous Australian TV personality with a food and cooking show and this is where she started. We each had a long black and bought some relish as a souvenir.

Then it was back to the B&B where we said goodbye to Trevor and had a light dinner before crashing for the night. In the morning we had to get up before the sun to get to the Adelaide airport for a 9:30am flight.

Overall, this has been the best part of the trip so far.

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Photos

The Barossa Valley
with a sculpture garden in the foreground

A pressing basket at Rockford
This is used to press the fermeted grape juice out of the mash. Pressure forces the juice between the staves into the tray at the bottom.