in the merry old land of aus: borossa valley

Hi, so I'll just start off by saying that another thing on my must-do list was to go on a wine tour. I had the Borossa Valley in mind and have heard a lot of good things about it from the locals as well. Alison, Steve, and I decided to go for it! The Borossa Valley is about an hour drive north of Adelaide and through the Adelaide Hills. On our way to the vineyards, we stopped at the 'World's Largest Rocking Horse' and a local fruit and nut market. Both were interesting in their own way. Our tour took us to four different places; Wolf Blass, Stanley Lambert, Grant Burg, & Kies Family wineries. These were all different experiences, but were all similar in that they were more wine tastings opposed to tours of the wineries. Not exactly what I expected as a first-timer, but good just the same.

Our first stop was for a three course lunch at a nice place a can’t remember the name of. I had a vegetarian risotto, Alison had beef and vegetables, and Steve had Barramundi on rice. We all had dessert. Wolf Blass, which was one of the larger and fancier places. We had a formal wine tasting of about seven different types. The only thing we didn’t try was their platinum label, because it was $15 for a taste. It must have been good! As far as the scenery goes, this place was probably the dullest.. It’s not that it was hard to look at, it was open and muddy and not the Borossa-Valley-picturesque I had imagined. The wine was good though and the people were nice! The next stop was Stanley Lambert. This was a smaller winery with some very interesting wine names, including Mustang Sally Shiraz. On the way to the next place, we drove past a very sketchy looking warehouse that said Penfold Grange on it. It is the company that produces a wine that is $500 a bottle. Insane, you should look it up on google! Anyway, Grant Burg was our next stop, and it was my least favourite because of the atmosphere. We were really rushed and I don’t think the people could wait until we were gone! I tried a bubbly there and then went outside to explore a little. This winery was on a hill and we could see pretty far into the Valley. The Kies Family Winery is family owned and operated. There is a small store where we tasted some of their famous dessert wines. I bought myself a nice apron with a wine glass on it and we called it a day.

On the way back to Adelaide, we stopped at the Whispering Wall, which is really a lake and dam. When you stand at one side of the curved wall, you can whisper to the other side and it comes out perfectly clear! So that's where the name comes from. This was a nice little pit stop to break up the drive home because even though we had an awesome time on the tour, we were all pretty tired and hungry from our busy day!