While we were wallowing in self-pity and rainwater in Waikerie, we managed to sneak over to the famous Barossa Valley for a day of vineyard hopping and free wine tasting…and not much else! The Barossa Valley is most well known for its reds – it’s the reason why anyone associates Shiraz with Australia. Apparently the hot, dry days and cool nights in this region of South Australia produce some excellent grapes. Needless to say, Mar and I were looking forward to sampling a few glasses from arguably the best wine-producing region of Australia. Unlike our whirlwind tour of randomness in the Margaret River region, we actually had a shortlist of wineries to go by, that way we’d make the most of our time in the valley and avoid any lemons. Our first stop was at Turkey Flat, a long-standing winery that boasted some of the oldest Shiraz vines in the country. I knew we had stopped at a quality winery because joining us at the tasting bar was a highfalutin tour group lead by a guy with an amazing moustache. It was a combination of Friedrich Nietzsche and Otto von Bismarck with a dash of Rollie Fingers. You know it’s a good one when you feel like less of a man just by standing in its presence. But I digress. While Turkey Flat’s rosé was pretty tasty, we were especially impressed with their Shiraz. You could tell this one was their baby, and it hurt to know that we would not be taking a bottle home with us, due to the $50 price tag. Our next stop was Rockford Winery, a classic Barossa establishment that apparently is one of the few wineries left in Australia that produces its wines using traditional, old-timey methods. The winery and cellar door utilize several stone buildings dating back to the original European settlement of the area back in the mid 1800s. These relics of frontier Australia encircled a paved courtyard that really set the mood once you stepped inside the space. The style of carefully laid stone and thick, hewed timber of the structures was a reminder of the German roots of South Australia’s settler history. While tasting the many quality wines at Rockford’s cellar door (awesome sparkling Shiraz!), we were pleasantly surprised to meet two Americans tasting next to us. This was a shock because finding an American in Australia is slightly more common than finding a spotted quoll or an albino wallaby in the wild. We’ve seen more echidnas than we’ve seen Americans. Daryl and Sara Mae were co-owners of an organic winery based in Humboldt County, California called Vinatura. Anticipating our chuckles at the choice of location, Daryl explained that the conditions in Humboldt, which provide for good weed growing, are coincidentally perfect for growing wine grapes as well. I couldn’t help but imagine how much fun their local farmers markets must be. We ended up bumping into these Americans again down the road at Charles Melton Wines, where they invited us to join them in demolishing a hefty cheese platter. While we traded travel stories we were treated to some excellent red wine. Charles Melton is exclusively a red wine producer, and they do not mess around. While everything we tried was delicious, the standouts for us were their “Nine Popes” Grenache, “Father in Law” Shiraz and “Voices of Angels” Shiraz. Hanging out with these winemakers made tasting far more engaging, as they brought about some excellent conversations with the Aussie winemakers about the trade as well as the craft. One question of note that Daryl raised was why Australia did not seem to have much exposure in the American wine scene. With such excellent wine being produced in this country, it was tragic to think that Yellow Tail was pretty much the only Aussie wine widely available in the States. In so many words, the server at Rockford explained that Australian winemakers just aren’t that interested, or it’s simply not affordable to distribute their wine so far away when they have a decent enough local market. Some small scale wineries in Australia do distribute to the States, but usually the small shipments are snatched up by those in the know - international wine clubs and boutique dealers, as well as aficionados. Before we headed back to Waikerie, we stopped in the small town of Tanunda to catch their Christmas parade. The whole scene made me nostalgic of being a little kid in my hometown in Massachusetts, where we would have parades during the summertime. The local Lutheran church had a bake sale and a BBQ sausage stand selling the classic Aussie combo of sausage on white bread with a squirt of tomato sauce (read ketchup). While the local businesses drove their floats down the main street, old Aussies in Santa hats, stubbies and cold beer in coozies looked on as their little grandkids ran around like tiny crazy people, waving around ribbons and glowsticks while shrieking with delight. Mar and I couldn’t help but crack up when Santa showed up in the back of a bright green El Camino-style vehicle. So freakin Australian. Fast forward a week and a half, just as Mar and I were becoming seasoned orange pickers, it was time to head east to Melbourne for Mar’s mom’s arrival. Instead of taking the shortest route straight across, we decided to stop back in Adelaide for one last evening in the city. My parents had bestowed us with some precious Christmas money, so we made sure to hit up an excellent restaurant, per their suggestion. We had some very gourmet fare at a small, swanky place called Decant, including some local scallops, lamb and beef! Yum. We also had to hit up Elephant Walk one last time, the Vienna coffee called to us from afar like a creamy, caffeinated siren song. It may have been a mistake on our part, because I ended up drinking all of mine and half of Marielle’s. At bedtime I was so uber-caffeinated I probably counted about 3 million sheep before I finally crashed. Washing off the carnage post-drive in Melbourne The next day was spent driving the long haul to Melbourne, almost 800 km in one go. The drive would have been a pleasant one had we not been traveling during the Great Locust Migration of 2010. Every few minutes a thick cloud of locusts would fly in the path of our car, resulting in mass bug-splosions. I’m not usually squeamish around this kind of thing, but when your windshield is literally plastered with insect gore and there are horrifically maimed and dismembered locusts dragging their broken body parts along the wiper blades like a tiny reenactment of Saving Private Ryan…well it’s super gross. Not to mention the fact that it’s a bit unnerving to look a flying locust in the eye before it slams into your windshield and pops 6 inches in front of your face at 110 k/hr, over and over again. For eight hours. Not a fun drive.
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Our first day in Adelaide just so happened to be my 24th birthday and I was excited to be celebrating it in a new place. Adelaide is quite different from Perth: a bit grungier, smaller, and tighter packed but easy to navigate and completely surrounded by beautiful parklands and green space. It is the capital of South Australia, which is apparently the only state in Australia established by non-convict, free immigrants (Aussies from SA love to point that out). They have every right to be proud of their state - founded on the promise of civil liberties and freedom from religious persecution, SA has come to be the most progressive of the Australian states. For instance, SA supermarkets won't bag your groceries unless you bring your own bags or buy heavy duty, reusable ones from them. Imagine how much plastic bag waste could be prevented by a policy like that in the US. Rundle Mall It was easy to see that Christmas mania had descended upon Adelaide - I think it was the 50 ft tall, fiberglass Santa that initially tipped us off. Having grown up on the east coast, it was super strange seeing Christmas decorations and hearing a nearby brass band playing "Good King Wenceslas" in 80+ degrees Fahrenheit Australia. We grabbed some tasty noodles for a nice lunch in the park, then set out to find a place to stay for the next few days. After setting up camp at a caravan park just outside of town, we ventured back into Adelaide for a rare night of metropolitan festivity and exploration. Our first stop was Adelaide’s famous Central Market: a huge indoor labyrinth of stalls selling local produce, bread, cheese, coffee, and gourmet specialty items. We only had one hour to explore before it closed and barely scratched the surface of this enormous event. The vibrant colors and delectable smells were enough to make you feel that you had reached a type of nirvana. The fruit stalls in particular reminded us of how far we were from home and how close we were to Asia, selling rambutan, lychee, jackfruit, and other fabulous Asian delights. We bought a few marinated Greek olives to munch as we wandered. All the while I kept thinking about how my late Grandma Julie, a true gourmet and a feisty proponent of all things delicious, would have loved this place. It was “Food of the gods!” as she would so often say. If there’s one thing to be said about Australian cities, it’s that there is never a shortage of places to eat. Urban Australians love to eat out, so even though there are 500 restaurants packed into one city, they never seem to be short on business. This competition greatly benefited our options for dinner, but did not help our indecisiveness. We wandered up and down the Asian restaurant district across from Central Market for what seemed like an hour until we settled on a Malaysian restaurant. After a delightful seafood lakhsa and a plate of wok-fried sweet chili squid, we wandered the hoppin’ streets of Adelaide for a nightcap. Tucked between the gaudy nightclubs filled with plastered backpackers we found an awesome little place on Hindley St called Apothecary 1878. This place was a pharmacy in the 19th century and is now a chic, multi-level wine and cocktail bar, complete with old-timey medicine bottles for decoration. As we browsed their incredibly extensive drink menu we noticed that they even offered six different kinds of absinthe at various levels of potency. Tres cool. It was a lovely place to spend the end of a great evening - enjoying a few final sips of cultural luxury before having to revert back to our ramen and canned spaghetti standard. Before departing Adelaide for some much needed employment, we did a bit more exploring in this very socially progressive Aussie city. Along North Terrace are several free museums nestled among the University of Adelaide’s campus. One, a natural history museum, had a beautiful, extensive exhibit on Aboriginal culture as well as a few others on local paleontology, flora and fauna, and historical Antarctic expeditions. Another museum, the Immigration Museum, had an interactive exhibit on the “White Australia Policy,” various immigration policies designed to keep Australia primarily white and British, which started at the turn of the century and continued until as recently as 1973. The exhibit was designed to put you in the shoes of a non-British immigrant trying to enter the country and whether or not you would make the cut. The requirements for them to enter were ludicrous. An immigrant from Italy, for instance, might be given a dictation exam in Norwegian, and would be summarily deported if they failed. There were also policies relating to Aboriginals that were designed with the deliberate intention of preventing them from reproducing. For many years, it was illegal for two full-blood aboriginals to marry in some parts of Australia. It was an enlightening exhibit, but disturbing that policies such as these were allowed to happen, let alone go on for as long as they did. If you ever find yourself in Adelaide, you should also check out a place called Elephant Walk. This awesome late-night establishment is incredibly tiny, but has cozy sofa nooks separated by bamboo screens and serves delicious coffees and deserts. It only opens after 8pm so it’s a great place to go late and have a Viennese coffee and some sticky date pudding. We would also highly recommend the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, a beautiful place for a walk where we found the Museum of Economic Botany. Yes, we know that is possibly the most boring name for a museum ever, but it was actually a really fascinating display of the myriad uses of plants and produce. Okay, still a bit geeky, but really interesting stuff! |
Marielle & BenWe're two people in the midst of severe quarter-life crises who decided to leave good jobs in a bad economy to travel to the other side of the world because, well, why not? Archives
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