Tag Archives: Wine

I’ll have another glass of Pinot Noir, please

2 Replies

What is your favorite drink?

I have written more than once about my growing interest in wine. These days it’s somewhere between a passion and obsession.

As a young adult, I had friends who were wine lovers. One of my friends got his first job as a winemaker when visiting my home. My relationship with him has opened up many opportunities to sample some great wines as well as chat about wine more generally. Then through business living in South Australia, Australia’s largest wine producer, I had a number of clients in the wine industry. All of these contributed to an interest, but it really was my PhD that investigated the non-financial characteristics of family wine businesses that moved wine to the forefront.

Through my PhD, and before that my Honours project, I had the opportunity to visit a number of wineries, both in South Australia and Australia. I also took the opportunity to meet and discuss wine with families in Italy and the USA. Their stories were fascinating. Their connection to the land, a sense of place, a connection to their community, as well as an emotional connection, led to the title of my thesis – The story is in the bottle. The title was borrowed from an interview I conducted in my Honours project with the managing director of a multigenerational family business which sadly no longer exists.

My PhD gave me access to family stories as well as, the opportunity to go back stage at a number of Australia’s family wine businesses. Some of these family wine businesses are household names with generations of history, while others are early on their journey.

The result was a desire to learn more about wine itself.

Continue reading →

A weekend in Maryborough, Victoria

2 Replies

Maryborough Railway Station – its as impressive as Mark Twain says!

An opportunity to hear a relative’s daughter in the Victorian Goldfield town of Maryborough was too good to pass up. It’s about 45 minutes from Ballarat and a couple hours from Melbourne, however, for us it was a six and a half hour drive, which with a couple of stops made it about an hour longer. Easy to do in a day from Adelaide.

We set off early on the Friday, taking the well worn path through Tailem Bend, stopping for a late brekkie in Keith at Henry and Rose. It’s been a go to for us in our recent trips. The coffee is always good, the service is friendly, and it has a good menu whether for brekkie or lunch.

I’ve lost count of the number of trips we have done on this road. Tailem Bend is about 70 minutes from Adelaide, and I always think it’s not until you drive past it you are actually on a road trip.

The recent addition of a world class motor sport park aptly named The Bend has increased activity in the region.

The towns on the drive are all ones we generally zip through. In the past, I have stopped at Cook Plains, but these days, it’s off the main road, so, these days, it’s a window view. Even though the towns whizz by, you can’t but love some of the town names, such as Coomandook and KiKi. We’ve occasionally stopped for a coffee and to ‘powder our nose’ in Coonalpyn. Like many of the towns along the road, it has a silo for the grain trains to stop at.

Once past Keith, it’s on through Bordertown across the border and into Victoria. We have often stopped in the nearby town of Mundulla if we’ve left late and need an overnight stay.

We made another stop at the quintessential Australian town of Dimboola. We couldn’t get over how much it had changed since our last visit 3 or so years earlier. On our previous visit, the town was all but a ghost town. Today it’s buzzing with lots of new shops. We revisited the Dimboola Imaginarium, which was being renovated when we last visited.  The Forbidden Forest looks a great spot for kids and The Dimboola Store is great for coffee.

Dimboola Imaginerium

From there, it was back on the road, through Horsham and Stawell, all places we were familiar with, before turning off to Maryborough. We weren’t familiar with this road, but the countryside is pretty typical of the region—paddocks with a few sheep and not much else. The dams were all pretty dry, which was no surprise given that it’s been a hot, dry summer. The final part of the drive took us through the Pyrenees wine region and Avoca before arriving in Maryborough.

Continue reading →

A few days in the Coonawarra – Day one tastings and lunch

1 Reply

Our apartment in Penola

This post follows on from A few days in the Coonawarra – getting there 

Our day started with a check of the weather. 

Despite it being the middle of Summer, it seemed the weather was going to be mild, so I was glad I’d packed for both hot and mild weather. With a decision on suitable attire for the day made, the next decision was where in Penola would we find the best coffee?

Penola offered 2 choices for coffee as well as 2 bakeries. We chose Moss and Wild, which was on the list of recommendations from our tour host. The coffee was excellent; however, the food choices were toasties or baked goods, which didn’t fit our needs. They did, however, look tasty. 

With a coffee under our belts, we headed back to our apartment and met Simon, the co-owner of  Coonawarra Experiences. Consistent with our earlier dealings in arranging our tour Simon was ready to answer all our questions, including a last-minute request to visit Penley Estate.

Unfortunately, Penley closed their tasting room during Covid and not reopened it. It seemed I would have to settle with a purchase of a couple of bottles of their Cab Sav from the Royal Oak Hotel. Penley is the family wine business of the Tolley sisters, a famous South Australian wine family. I’d been a fan of their wines for a while, so I was disappointed that we couldn’t make a visit. Penley offers a range of traditional varieties made in a contemporary style.

Continue reading →

A few days in the Coonawarra – getting there

1 Reply

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.

Tintinara

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.

Continue reading →

Brisbane – a week in the city

2 Replies

We had arranged a trip to Brisbane to coincide with the end of Winter. A chance to escape the cold and wet. However, our late August trip had to be postponed due to illness. No matter our rescheduled trip in late October achieved the same result. We still flew out of Adelaide in dreary wet cold weather. So much for Spring!

Airport security remains a shambles but my years of flying while working gave me lifetime membership of one of the higher frequent flyer higher categories, allowing us priority access and jumping the queue. Those long over and back day trips to Perth had there advantages.

We arrived late morning in Brisbane. As we didn’t know where the airport express train would stop in relation to our accommodation, we caught a cab. It was more expensive but convenient. Our accommodation was private overlooking the botanic gardens.

Other than a day with my favourite person’s sister and her son’s family we had no plans for our week in Brisbane. We’d made some bookings at a few restaurants and downloaded some “things to do” via https://www.visitbrisbane.com.au/ . It gave us an outline for a week that fitted within our Slow Travel mantra.

We hadn’t lined up dinner for night one, although I’d given some thought to The Prawnster. The reviews were so polarised that I wasn’t sure, but after the Ok from my favourite person, we gave it a go.

As the picture shows it’s a boat and as the website says it does seafood and nothing else, except for wine and beer! If you want chips, a salad or dessert the advice on the website is to bring them. It was fabulous! Very casual, with the waiter in shorts and a tee shirt, happy to serve a drink when needed and ready to plonk the food in front of you. We had a mountain of prawns and bugs which came with a couple of disposable wood forks, tartare sauce, a finger bowl, serviettes and a bucket for the shells. We loved it, but as one of the reviews said make sure you’ve read the FAQs before you go so you know what you’ll get.

Continue reading →