Highly unusual, but today we are taking a ship’s tour. Yeah, yeah, we know…don’t get on that bus…but it’s a wine tasting tour to the Hunter Valley, it was pretty cheap, and this way Ed doesn’t have to worry about driving while I drink! Hopefully it will go smoothly.
Breakfast on the balcony, then down to the theater to wait for the tour. We’re on Bus #2, and somehow manage to get on the bus first, so we’ve got the catbird seats, right up front! Cool! 32 people total – 30 make it on time. The last 2 don’t show up for 15 minutes and finally get on the bus right about 8:30…honestly! This is why we hate tours.
We’re finally off and our guide Graham begins his tour. He’s very knowledgeable and nice, but oh my gosh, his voice! It’s just this low, calm and un-modulated drone that goes on and on and on. I am having a very hard time keeping up with what he says, because it is like background noise. It’s probably an hour and a half drive to the Hunter, and after the first hour, there is only one word I can tell you: Coal. This area was built on coal, and everything Graham talks about is coal this, coal that, coal train, coal equipment, coal, coal, coal. I’m sleeping!
Finally we get out into the country enough so that the talk turns to wine. Yay! So, boring, basic facts: 4% of all Australian wine comes from the Hunter Valley; 60% comes from South Australia/Victoria area; the first commercial vines planted in the Hunter date back to 1824, with the first wines produced in 1829. We’re visiting 3 vineyards today – Lindemans (the oldest surviving winery in Australia), McGuigans and Tyrrell’s (the second oldest winery and the only family owned one on our tour). We drive down narrow lanes cut through lots of open fields, vineyards and farms. It all looks very familiar to us, because of course, we were here 5 years ago on our first visit Down Under! We keep picking out the wineries we visited, and pointing out places we didn’t go! Funny.
We definitely did not go to Lindemans, because I was drinking Lindemans at the time, so why go somewhere we knew? But today, that is our first stop (drinking before 10am, thank you! Yikes).
We’re taken to a tasting room and led through a series of 5 wines – varying from a sparkling Semillon to Shiraz – with water and cheese and crackers in between. They are all very good. We get a little history on the winery, how they are the oldest (knew that), expanded some years back to build a bigger winery somewhere else, produce however many number of varieties, best selling Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, etc. It’s all very interesting and we get through it very quickly. With time for some photos from the upstairs windows looking over the vineyards.
We also have time to visit the shops downstairs and have a quick taste of other wines if we want. I do want! I taste their SB and decide to buy a bottle – it’s only $10. What the heck, if the ship takes it from me, they take it. It won’t go to waste since we’ve got about a week on land after the cruise.
Everyone is very timely back on the bus (thank heavens), so we’re off early and drive through the gardens park where we’ll be coming back for our lunch stop. Next stop – Tyrrell’s – the family owned winery, which is the highlight of the trip IMHO.
We are greeted by Andrew, one of the winemakers at Tyrrell’s. He is personality plus, gives us grief right off the bat about our ship waking up all of Newcastle, “Didn’t you hear the ship’s horn?” “No, we’re at the back of the boat.” “Well, I was on the beach, and it was the loudest horn I’ve ever heard – and he blew it twice!” “So the whole town hates us, huh?” “Well, not the whole town, but most.” “Good thing we’re here and not in town then!”
And so began our tour. We started in the original cabin that Edward Tyrrell built when he first came to the land. It’s awfully tiny – but for just one man in the middle of the wilderness, guess it was fine! We grab our glasses and go outside to listen to Andrew talk about the family business.
He traces the history of the winery from 1858 and through 5 generations of family as we walk in the field and head toward some of the oldest vines in the world. It’s a great way to experience the vineyard – a gorgeous day – beautiful setting – tasting wines. Perfect!
Back to the vines, Andrew shows us the oldest vines in the vineyard and tells us a funny story about how one of the Tyrrells jumped a fence to get some some cuttings from another vineyard who wouldn’t share the trimmings. (Funnier when you heard it first hand.) He showed us the soil (all natural irrigation), explained how they cut back the vines to produce better grapes, and pointed out areas not 100 feet away where the soil wasn’t good enough to grow grapes. Pretty wild!
We got a good look at a gulas too – a little parrot looking bird watching us quaff our wine.
We went through the winery next – watching the process of separating the skins, stems and grapes and tasting the must (sp? think this is what it is called) made from the unfermented grapes. Then onto tasting the finished shiraz product while we toured the areas with the casks for fermentation.
Andrew has given us such a great tour, and we’ve taken so long that we don’t even have time for the sales spiel and aren’t offered any wine to buy! Which is a shame, because their Semillon is the best I’ve tasted so far. They don’t import to the US any longer – it’s too costly and Yellow Tail is such a huge competitor it was either bring in a partner to enlarge (which the Tyrrells didn’t want to do – they wanted to control their own destiny) or stay smaller and look at other emerging markets. Smaller it was – so I’ll just have to look for them in the bottle stores here. At least now I know I have good wines I can buy.
As we are leaving, a couple of us are lagging behind, but it gives us an opportunity to peek into the old family home where they first generation Tyrrells raised 10 children.
Holy Mole! 10 kids here? Now that’s a tight fit!
We wave goodbye as the next cruise ship bus pulls up and head back down the lane to McGuigans where we will have our cheese tasting. We’ve definitely been here before! We wanted to get cheese for lunch and just picnic, but even 5 years ago it was way too pricey. So we passed on it then. Now it’s included. yay!
We sit at communal tables and share some delightful feta and pepper mix, camembert, brie and blue (well, Ed shares the blue!).
Then it’s off to lunch (not included) at the gardens. We go to Oscar’s – which Graham has recommended and decide on a hamburger for Ed and a triple smoked ham sandwich for me. Stupid – we’re not even that hungry since we just had the cheese – we really should have shared – especially at these prices ($19 and $14, respectively).
Ah well – they were both very good – Ed’s more so than mine – his burger was HUGE and totally tasty Nice size beef patty with onion, beetroot, lettuce tomato and egg (this is OZ, after all). Mine was a plain old ham sandwich, on good bread, but that was the only redeeming feature, and quite disappointing for the cost. We’ll know better next time.
We wander around after lunch, walking off the bread, then hop back on the bus to go back to McGuigans for the wine tasting. While we didn’t buy any cheese when we were here in ‘07, we definitely did the wine tasting. We remember the little tin roofed bar that they use just like it was yesterday. The wine here is good as well, sparkling, Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc, a deep Merlot (not my style) and a tawny port type wine (gave to Ed). Out to the shop – no purchases for us – and back to the bus for our last stop in Morpeth, a little village on the river that used to be a port town. We only have about a half an hour, because we must get back to the ship on time (the tour folks have called Graham 3 times to impress upon him the need to get back by 3:30!). But that’s not a problem because this seems to be a weekend town and most of the shops are only open Thursday-Sunday. We sort of wander up the street, debating on getting something sweet for a snack. Lots of options, but it’s all so expensive, that we end up opting for a Pepsi Max and some sour jelly worms (don’t ask) from the local grocery. It helps keep us awake for the drive back to the ship!
No problems making it back on time, and we head to our balcony as we sail out through the pretty harbor and past the fort on the hill (where they are shooting off a cannon – sort of in our direction, are they shooting at us? Because we woke them up this morning?) and watch the tugboat guide us into to the open ocean.
Tomorrow – a relaxing day at sea.
