Day 16
Travel Location: Clare,Australia
We started early with drinking wine today. At 11 am we were at the Penfolds’ cellar door. We knew that Penfolds has some nice wines, but there are quite a few more only available at the cellar door. Despite being a big vineyard, their cellar door is quite small and gives a boutique impression. Have you ever wondered what the names of Penfold mean? For example Bin 28 or Bin 128. It was a system implemented by one of the first Penfold winemakers and indicated where the grapes are from and how they were stored. For example Shiraz from Barossa Valley stored in French Oak. However, today it stands more for a continuation of a tradition.
We then drove to Eden Valley which we were told is the north end of the valley with colder climate and famous for their Riesling. We visited Henschke wines just twenty minutes before their closing time. Their wines are excellent, as a speciality we took a bottle of sparkling Shiraz. It was not for tasting and we were only allowed to take one – which of course we did.
We said good bye to Barossa and Eden Valley and made our way towards Clare Valley just north of Barossa. We reached in the later afternoon and started our tasting at Annie’s Lane – one of the bigger producers here. Next we visited a boutique winery called Stephen John. It was located along the Riesling Trail and the car park just about big enough for a car. The wines were nice although the lady serving us was not very talkative. We decided that we had enough white wines (and that’s what this region is famous for) and drove to Burra, about 35 km from Clare. They had an advertisement for Apple Wine (“Most” for the Swiss and Cider for the English). We didn’t find the place at first but the people in town were very friendly and seeing us struggle helped us. The guy at the cider tasting was, like the lady at Stephen John, not so talkative. Also, they had three apple wines (the ones without the bubbles) for tasting, but not the ones with. Seems they do not have enough visitors. After a while the guy warmed up and started talking a bit more, he sometimes seemed to struggle for words, so he might not be unfriendly, just limited in vocabulary.
Well, we ended the day in the Caravan Park in Clare. The weather got even colder from yesterday and we prepare ourselves with a nice Asian Meal at the Clare Asian Restaurant. Don’t try the garlic prawns, but the fried rice, sizzling vegetables and the wrapped, fried prawns are excellent. And the waitresses are very helpful and nice.
