Swan Valley WIne Tour

---

With a day of indulgence ahead of us we started the day with a healthy trip to the gym, but the good work was quickly countered with a bacon and egg roll for breakfast - although we thought this would lay good foundations for the day of wine tasting ahead.
We walked to the train station in Perth where we met our bus that would transport us around the wineries, and Phil the driver. The first winery stop was at Ambrook wines at 10.30am, but with our bacon rolls behind us we were all ready to jump straight into the wine tasting. We tried 6 of the wines at Ambrook, which is a very small winery which only sells its wines from the cellar door. It turns out we were too efficient with our wine tasting and finished our tastings ahead of the schedule that our driver had set so we had a few minutes to enjoy the sunshine in the vineyard before boarding the bus to got to the next winery. The next stop was Garbin Estate wines which was a larger establishment selling its wines to liquor stores across Australia. This winery was set up in a corner of the warehouse in which they produce their wines so we got to see some of the barrels that they were using to make their wines. Next was a much larger winery called Houghton. After a couple of tastings here we each selected our favourite wine to take to the restaurant at the winery where we had antipasti platters for lunch. There were 2 more wineries which we visited after lunch, as well as Jo's highlight - the chocolate factory, where we were able to help ourselves to tastings of the white, milk and dark chocolate drops as well as selecting one truffle to try each. Although we managed to blag an extra truffle tasting each. The final tasting of the day was at a brewery. We each selected one of the beers and ciders on offer which we were then able to enjoy in the beer garden with some snacks to soak up the alcohol. The bus ride back to the city was a little more lively than the journey to the swan valley as we had singing and dancing in the aisles! Once back in the city we headed to our hostel to check in to our new room and sleep off some of the food and drink of the day!

---