3rd Day in Adelaide

Me tasting wine at the wineries.
see all photos »

I woke up around 6am when my roommate left and then went back to sleep until about 7:30am. You would think that my roommate was the perfect roommate, except that he smelled like a dirty french ashtray and he snored all night. I got up showered and the mini bus from Prime Tours picked me up just after 8:30am. As we travelled through the city we the tour guide told us all about Adelaide history and about some of the building we were driving by. Adelaide was designed by Colonel William Light in 1836 and only free colonists were allowed, no prisoners as was much of Australia at that time. We travelled along the Torrens River to the Torrens Gorge and stopped at The Toy Factory in Gumeracha, which is the home of the World's Largest Rocking Horse, it is some 80 meters tall. They had lots of handmade toys and a petting zoo as well. Next we drove to the first winery, Wolf Blass, which is a large winery that was bought by the Foster Group. We sampled the following wines: 2004 Gold Label Pinot Chandonnay Sparkling, 2006 Gold Label Eden Valley Riesling, 2005 Presidents Selection Chardonnay, 2006 Eaglehawk Rose, 2005 Yellow Label Merlot, 2004 Presidents Cabernet Sauvignon, 2004 Gold Label Barossa Shiraz, and Red Label NV Reserve Tawny Port. I got a menu of the wines obviously, because there is no way I could remember all the names. The Merlot was really good so I also bought a glass for $5 before we left. We then stopped for lunch at the Vine Inn, a nice restaurant in the Barossa Valley. I had the Grilled Kangaroo with steamed vegetables, since I had never really had kangroo other that in meat pies. It tasted amazingly good, it was tender, had good spices, topped with a dark gravy, and mash potatoes underneath. It was by far the best meal I had since my trip started. After lunch we headed to the second winery called Vine Crest and it was a much smaller winery that only used their own grapes and some of there vines were the oldest Shiraz grape in the world at 160 years old. We did a structures tasting and went from the whites to the reds to the ports. Before we left I was looking around and saw a bottle of Sparkling Shiraz and asked about it. They let me try it and I was impressed. I had never had a sparkling red wine and I really liked it. Then we drove up to the top of Mengler's Hill Lookout, which overlooked the Barossa Valley and it had some artistic statues placed all around the top of it. Then we went to the final two winery. First was called Barossa Wines and it wasn't structured so you could ask for which ever wines you wanted, but the did try to have you drink them in order for tasting. I had a Semillion, a Semillion with Sauvignon Blanc, a Chardonnay, a Merlot, a Cabernet, a Shiraz, a soft & sweet Shiraz, a Tawny, and a Muscat. The last winery was a small family owned winery called the Kies Winery. It was also an unstructured tasting, but we tasted in order. I tasted about ten different wines and I really liked the Merlot and the Shiraz. They also had a Sparkling Merlot that was good, but I though it was more of a novelty so I bought a bottle of the Merlot and Shiraz. The last stop was the Barossa Dam and Reservoir, which was called the Whispering Wall. It got this name from the acoustically properties of the dam. You can have a crystal clear conversation from one end of the dam all the way to the other and only have to whisper to hear each other. It was actually kind of weird when I tried it, since you couldn't even see each other, but it sounded like the other person was talking right next to you. Of course there were four people that held the bus up at every single stop. The first two were girls from Hong Kong that took pictures of everything and they would set up their camera so that they could both be in every picture. They actually set up their camera so that they could get a picture of themselves holding a bag of dried fruit during one of the stops. The other two was a mother and son from Japan and they would video tape and take pictures of everything. At one point everyone was on the bus except for the Japanese kid and the whole bus watched him slowly walk from the other side of the dam talking to someone the whole way without realizing he was five minutes later and everyone was waiting on him. Pretty standard I guess for tours in Australia. I finally made it back to the hostel around 5:30pm and I was a little drunk and very tired. I took about an hour nap and then went to get some food. I didn't really want to eat out again, so I stopped by the grocery store and picked up some food. I was rather limited since I had no kitchen, microwave, or dishes. I made due with some meat, cheese, crackers, chips (potatoe chips), yogurt, and other snacks.

You would think that my roommate was the perfect roommate, except that he smelled like a dirty french ashtray and he snored all night.