Our daughter’s involvement in a wedding in the South East of South Australia and our offer to look after her children while she and her husband were at the wedding and surrounding events gave us just the excuse to visit The Coonawarra, one of Australia’s most famous wine regions. In my case, it had been about a decade since I had visited and, for my favourite person, much longer.
The Coonawarra is about 400kms from Adelaide, making it about a 4 hour 30 trip assuming a short break somewhere like Tintinarra or Keith.
The road to Keith is well travelled as it’s the main highway to Melbourne, and just short of Keith, there is a turn-off for the Riddoch Highway that took us through Padthaway past Naracoorte and onto our destination of Penola in the heart of The Coonawarra.
The Coonawarra is a designated wine region that was hard fought for in the late 1990s, finally getting its own designation in 2003 as part of the Limestone Coast Region. There are just over 20 wineries in the region. It is a mix of the big corporates such as Penfolds, Treasury (owner of Wynns) and large family wine companies such as Casella (owner of Brands Laira) and Yalumba, along with smaller concerns such as Whistle Stop and Raidis.
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