Barossa Valley

The drive from Adelaide was easy, and for once we had no problems with picking up the car.

We arrived in the valley down Seppeltsfield Road, past the very large Seppeltsfield Winery, it is probably the largest building in the area. Peter Seppelt was one of the German Lutherans who founded this community in the 1830’s, it used to be known as the Valley of Churches, but now it is the Valley of Wine with in excess of 100 wineries.

Our Hotel was The Louise, 15 suites in a beautiful setting near the top of a hill, with views over rows of vines, it had 1 vineyard (Scharkes) opposite and another (Heritage) next door, they had both of these wines on their list and they must be the least travelled wines in the world to an independent restaurant.

Our suite was superbly furnished with two showers, one indoor and the other outdoor, we used them both of course. They have a very upmarket and expensive restaurant – The Appelation, which we used on the last evening, it has two ‘tasting’ style menus from which you can chose 3 or 5 courses from a list of dishes, to have smallish plates but of course with a palate cleanser between courses; the 5 course selection can also come with a specially selected wine for each course.

Breakfast was served in our suite and we chose to use to have it outdoors on our little patio area.

On the first day after checking in we visited Maggie Beer’s Farm Shop, where they serve mini picnic hampers for lunch and have a large lake, for purposes unknown.

On the first two evenings we were visited by a kangaroo who stopped to eat outside the terrace about 20 yards away.

On the second day we visited three local towns Nuriootpa, Angaston and Tanundra; all lovely little places and Tanundra even has a micro brewery producing some british style ales. George had a taste of the local white and made a new friend in the Yalumba winery at Angaston.

We had driven around the Barossa for 1½ days and thought to go a little further afield, we drove along the Sturt Highway (another Australian pioneer) which connects Adelaide to Sydney. First stop was at a town called Truro which was about 200yards long, Gwen bought some olives for her friend Gloria. 

We then drove about 40 miles to the town of Blanchetown which is a horse short, it is on the Murray River and the site of a recent drinking water project, which gave us some interesting pictures of Pelicans and what looked like Cormorants.

We were told that the next town along - Waikerie had much more to see including a café, but since it was another 60 miles away we decided to give it a miss.

On the way back we visited the Wolf Blass winery, but it was very architecturally modern; stainless steel, concrete and glass trying to sell at prices higher than you could buy in the local bottleshops, so Gwen had a few tastings but I was driving.

We stopped off at the small Murray Street Winery in the town of Greenock and bought a very reasonably priced bottle of Chardonnay.

We then drove to the town of Lyndoch and had a snack at the German Café before going to the Jacobs Creek Winery at Jacobs Creek in Rowland Flat where Gwen had several more tastings and bought a very nice Pinot Grigio.

This winery is also of a modern design, but much more human and friendly, they had several exhibition pieces.