Yarra Valley (June 30 - July 1, 2006)

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Friday

We enjoyed some toasties and coffee before heading to the Yarra Valley, a renowned wine region about an hour northeast from Melbourne. Coffee in Australia either means instant coffee or espresso-based coffee. Australians we sadly discovered, particularly after enjoying delicious coffee all around Vietnam, do not drink filtered coffee.

We arrived in Healesville around noon and decided to spend the day at the Healesville Sanctuary. Healesville Sanctuary began as a place where they take care of sick and injured animals (approximately 600 per year) hoping to return them to the wild but sometimes keeping them in captivity for various reasons. We had so much fun and we were able to see kangaroos, emus, wombats, a tasmanian devil, koalas, platypuses, dingos, wallabies, kookaburras, flying foxes (also known as fruit bats) and echidnas. They have various shows throughout the day and we were able to learn more about koalas (besides the fact that they are cute which we already knew), platypuses (besides the fact that they are weird little critters which we already knew) and birds of prey. The birds in the show, including a peregrine falcon, caught food mid-air thrown by the trainer. Australia’s largest bird of prey, the wedge-tailed eagle, and one of the local owls rounded out the show. Some of the birds were very jittery as a pair of eagles had been circling the sanctuary throughout the day and it was interesting to see the captive animals so fearful of the predators.

At the platypus house we got to see a platypus feeding and a veterinarian examining the wounds of a platypus who was tangled up in the plastic ring that holds a six pack of sodas. The first time we visited the koalas they were mostly asleep but when we went back later in the afternoon for the presentation they were very active and we got to watch them eating and climbing. There was also a mother and her baby in the pouch. Other highlights include watching the tasmanian devil carrying around a frozen rabbit to eat and the fruit bats watching us watch them while we were in their cage which was pretty creepy. Roger thought the dingoes were handsome but Amy just couldn’t get past the “dingo ate my baby” thing. On our way out of the Sanctuary to our car a wallaby startled us by running right past us as if we had been in the wild.

After the Sanctuary we headed into the Healesville town center which consisted of about 4 blocks of restaurants and shops, most of which appeared to close around 5 which we discovered during our time in Australia is quite common. We decided to eat at Grind and Groove because they had a fire and a menu which included nachos. We sat by the fire enjoying our nachos and drinks (the house shiraz for Amy and a local Yarra Valley beer for Roger). We were joined by a couple (he was Australian and she was Israeli) and their two kids who were good friends of the restaurant owner. We chatted with them for about an hour and they knew everyone who came in to the restaurant which really emphasized how small the town was. They were very interested in what we were doing and we had a lot of fun talking to them. The woman couldn’t understand why we would want to come to Australia because it is so similar to America and she also didn’t understand why we would like Melbourne when so many cities like Los Angeles and New York. We tried our best to explain how different Australia was even though there were also a lot of similarities and also that we thought Melbourne offered a lot while retaining a smaller town feel.

At this point we decided to move on and try a different place so we went to a hotel before deciding we’d rather have a drink back in the room. Another necessary translation - a hotel in Australia is a pub not a place of lodging which can be very confusing when you are looking for a place to sleep. We walked to the drive-through bottle shop (liquor store) where the variety of sickeningly sweet drinks typically reserved for high school girls entranced Roger. In Australia you are able to buy individual bottles and so Roger came away with a bottle of cola and whiskey and four vodka based drinks (flavored with honeycomb, caramel, banana and black cherry). Amy panicked at the massive variety of wine and picked Yellowtail Shiraz, one you can each pick up at your local liquor store in Anytown, USA. After getting totally outfitted for a night of partying, we got home, Roger drank his cola and whiskey and Amy had a few sips of wine before we fell fast asleep.

Saturday

Roger only started drinking shortly before our wedding (hmmmmm) and so he is slowly developing a taste for beer but does not like wine at all. In fact, rather than using “complex”, or “full-bodied” to describe wine, he has consistently described it as having the flavor of “poop”. So Amy’s goal for our wine tasting day was to find some wine that Roger would like to drink because it’s no fun drinking alone (especially down the road in France or Italy). We got a late start and didn’t leave for the wineries until around 10:15 but the first winery we stopped at, Tarra Warra, didn’t open until 11 (guess they frown on wine for breakfast or brekky as the Australians call it). There are approximately 60 vineyards in the area so it didn’t take long to stumble across the next one, Yarra Track Vineyard. Yarra Track Vineyard is family owned and small and so you can only get their wine at their vineyard or online. Each of their wines is given the name of their latest grandchild. The vineyard charged $2 per person for the tasting and the woman who ran the vineyard was very nice and helpful. We tried some chardonnays, pinot noirs and a rose there and they were all good. We were the only two at the vineyard and so we felt pressure to buy even though the pressure was self-imposed. It was our first tasting and so we felt awkward just tasting and leaving. Roger liked all of the wine we sampled there and was talking about buying several things but we only ended up buying a bottle of the rose. Are bottles ever as good as you remember thinking at the tasting? We finally ended up drinking this bottle of wine while we were in New Zealand and didn’t think it was as good as we remembered.

For our second stop we went back to TarraWarra because we were hoping for a more impersonal experience (i.e. we wouldn’t feel pressure to buy anything). This was a big vineyard and you could sample their 8 wines for $4 per person. This tasting reminded us of the scene from Sideways where they go to the large popular winery that Paul Giametti thinks is a joke and he ends up drinking from the spittoon. Well, we didn’t drink from the spittoon but we definitely made frequent use of it, not finishing any of the samples. Roger didn’t like any of the wines and Amy felt the quality was similar to anything she would have pulled off the shelf at the liquor store purely based on the pretty label or cost. We weren’t tempted to buy a bottle at all. TarraWarra also had an art gallery ($5 per person) and a restaurant but we did not go to either.

Our third stop was at one of the valley’s oldest wineries, Yerring Station, which also has a big vineyard and both a casual and a formal restaurant (both smelled and looked lovely but we opted for Tim Tams and PB&J in the car). Yerring Station also has a gourmet shop with jams, cheeses, olives, etc. that all looked delicious. The vineyard had a list of wines divided by sparkling, red, white and dessert. We don’t think there was a formal tasting because the guy who helped us just asked what we wanted to try and we were not charged anything. We tried one champagne which was very good but expensive. We’re not very good at drinking champagne and before we left for this trip we had a few bottles of champagne from various new year’s that we never got around to drinking. We like to say that the only champagne that we drink is Dom Perignon which we were lucky enough to receive for our wedding from Amy’s very generous aunt and uncle. That is the only bottle of champagne that we made sure to drink that before we left for our trip and actually enjoyed it the night before we left because there’s nothing like being hungover on long international flights.

Roger blew our cool, sophisticated cover at the tasting and told the young guy helping us that we had just had a few Tim Tams before coming in. The guy (a wine aficionado or as he described it (and not as a joke) a “wino”) promised to hook us up with something Roger’s sweet tooth could fully appreciate. He poured us their sweet pinot gris which we both really liked. He also asked us if we had ever enjoyed coffee through tim tams which we gather must be a popular combination in Australia. We had not but we liked the sound of where this was going. He poured us their fortified shiraz, which was similar to a port, and recommended that we drink it through dark chocolate Tim Tams. Roger was delirious about the possibilities and quickly becoming a wino (perhaps more in the American sense than the Australian sense). Amy also sampled a shiraz but didn’t think it was anything special and so we bought a bottle of the fortified shiraz and the pinot gris. We ended up drinking the pinot gris later in Cape Tribulation, Australia, and it was the only bottle we bought from our day of wine tasting that lived up to our memory. We drank the fortified shiraz with some friends in Brisbane and discovered that the wine was very strong and that wine through Tim Tams just make the Tim Tams soggy.

Yerring Station has three distributors in the United States but not all of their wines (including the fortified shiraz) are available. We would definitely recommend the pinot gris to aspiring winos.

After three wine tastings Amy was very sleepy so we drove to the town of Yarra Glen and had Devonshire tea (which was pretty good but not as good as the one we had in Melbourne at the Botanical Gardens). After tea, we drove past a couple of vineyards before deciding to stop at Domaine Chandon, another very popular vineyard. We went in to do a tasting and tour but once we got inside Amy decided she might be done for the day so we headed back to Healesville. On the way back to our motel we stopped at the $2 store (because who can pass up variations on the Dollar Store?).

Across from our motel we notice that Boat O’Craigo was open. We just had to stop because we had been laughing at the name since we first saw it, thinking it was Boato Craigo. The only person inside was the guy working which was intimidating at first but he was very nice and informative. He was quite a wino (tee hee) and was really interesting to talk to because he was so passionate about wine and particularly pinot noir. The vineyard had been purchased a couple of years earlier and the owner grew white wine grapes at that location and red wine grapes in the Kangaroo Valley. The building was beautiful with one side completely consisting of windows overlooking the 40 acre vineyard. We did a tasting of pinot noirs, chardonnay and shiraz. We liked all of the wine that we tried and decided to each (yes, Roger too) have a glass of the award winning shiraz while enjoying a platter with cheese, salami, crackers and olives. We decided to buy 2 bottles of the shiraz so we’re not sure if there is a tasting fee. This was our favorite vineyard of the day but unfortunately you cannot get the wine online or in stores. We ended up drinking one of the bottles of shiraz in Australia and one in New Zealand and, again, these did not live up to our memory of the tasting.

After our fancy pants day, we decided to unwind by enjoying some peanut butter and honey sandwiches while watching Grease and High School Musical (a lame attempt, albeit with a few catchy songs, at recreating Grease for kids today). Despite being just an hour down the road from Melbourne the Yarra Valley is a world away from the big city. The pace is lively but slow and the town is definitely built around savoring the local wine and leisure time.

We really enjoyed our time in the Yarra Valley but we can definitively say that it is not a good place for people on a budget because we ended up walking away from the day with 5 bottles of wine.

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Photos

Maybe the Dingo Ate Your Baby
Yes it's in poor taste but can you think of anything else when you see or hear about dingoes?

Tasmanian Devil
eating its frozen rabbit dinner

Comments

[Mandi]

looking for a pet...
Are wombats nice because I really want one!!

[Waters]

nice couple
and nice travel !