Escaping To The Yarra Valley Pt2

The exciting conclusion to one of the great stories of 2011... (or something). Read part one here

Lunch was at Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander and included my first introduction to pork rillette - this could be a life long love affair. Great venue, great food and well worth a visit. The staff were great even the guy who foolishly assumed the guy would be drinking beer and the girl wine. Ohh how we laughed!

The weather had been hot all day and was starting to get oppressive, as was my need to spit everything so I could continue to drive. The heat seemed to be bothering the people at our next stop too. Rochford was strange. At first we couldn't attract anyones attention and then they seemed to be giving us an angry tasting. The wines were a mixed bag. Some where good, some were uninspiring.
They also tried to sell us a segway (pictured below) tour of the winery. An interesting idea, could certainly get hairy dealing with people at the end of a long day touring. But it was not for us on a day like that. Plus, we had more wine to taste.

Oakridge was next, an air-conditioned cellar door was just the trick! As were the stunning the Chardonnays that they made. From entry level to the single sites they were all great. A great source of amusement was had when my companion went off on a tangent of how Australian's should make Australian wine and not compare it to French wine. And just after this our friendly host came up to pour the Syrah for us, called so "because it is more French in style than the Barossa style Shiraz." In the face of such a challange I feel I did exceptionally well to maintain my composure. The reds were nice, but I left with a bottle of the Estate Chardonnay. Seriously, Try the chardonnays!

Did I mention it was increadibly hot?

The last stop was Chandon. A chance to taste some Aussie 'Champagne' (ha!), the wines are always quite well put together and enjoyable. But, it would have been more enjoyable to have been sitting down and relaxing with a glass I could drink.

It was really hot by now and so home time was called. Overall it was an interesting trip, we tasted some of the best in the Valley and some of the indifferent. It certainly will have to be repeated in the near future. There were quite a few great places on the wishlist that we didn't get a chance to see. Plus, cellar door people are some of the most amusing and sometimes alarming people you could hope to interact with.

Escaping To The Yarra Valley Pt1

A few weeks ago, in a vein attempt to educate a Burgundian friend on the merits of Australian wine, we set out to see the delights of the Yarra Valley. Unfortunately our designated driver was extremely hung over and went back to bed, which meant that I had to shoulder the driving responsibility.

Despite our early set back it turned out to be a fruitful (pun attempted) day and quite interesting. I've always liked the Yarra but found that it is very two speed. There are some of Australia's best wines in it's boundaries, and also some shocking wines. We tried to avoid the latter. Speaking if it's boundaries, the Yarra is too big, the diversity and footprint make any generalisations about the region almost impossible and rather silly to attempt. Thankfully however, there is now a push to define subregions and even highlight particularly good individual plots. Hopefully this will help improve regional understanding and quality.

We started at the Coldstream Hills winery as they were opening the doors. This earned us the tag of "early internationals". True to form and expectations there was a range of wine from commercial to interesting to amazing. Pinot and Chard were the best varieties. The Reserve wines stood out as did some of the single vineyard wines. A good yardstick for measuring further visits.

A little further down the road we stopped at the wonderful Yarra Yering. The wines are consistently amazing as they were this day. I grumbled to myself as my French friend and the guys pouring us the wine discussed their favourite Grand Cru's of Burgundy and giggled inwardly as they scorned peoples love of screw caps and I got to point out that one of the wines was in fact corked.
Great wines, highly recommended.



Great View from Warramate.

Warramate was the next stop and proved fascinating tasting wines from the top of the hill Coldstream Hills, midslope Warramate and the lower down Yarra Yering. It also gave us our most informal host, freely poking fun at customers and their peculiarities (once they had left of course). The wines here were not bad, just not exciting. They seemed to be missing something.

That took us to lunch. This topic and more tasting will be tackled in a later entry.

Read the stunning conclusion here