With all the panic about Coronavirus we were glad we decided not to venture far for our 40th Wedding Anniversary. While we still have wonderful memories of the awesome Grand Tour we had embarked upon for our 30th Wedding Anniversary, ten years on we were much less adventurous.

Rather than travelling thousands of kilometres to the other side of the world we travelled less than 100 kms for a lavish few days in the nearby Barossa Valley.

The Barossa Valley just an 80 minute drive for Adelaide is probably Australia’s best known wine region.

We decided to stay at The Louise, a luxury resort for two nights. The resort is nestled in the vineyards and has about 40 rooms. We stayed in the mid-priced (still quite pricey) room. The views over the vineyards from our room and the restaurant were delightful.

After arriving we visited the nearby Seppelsfield Gin Distillery. A short walk from The Louise. We arrived at the distillery late in the afternoon, it was busy without being a crush. It’s a lovely modern wood clad building that takes in the views across the vineyards that are everywhere in the Barossa.

To celebrate our anniversary we dined at the Appellation restaurant a full on experience. The food and service was excellent but for me it was about the wine. We chose the regional paired wines for dinner. All of the wines were excellent but worthy of particular mention was the Charlotte Dalton Grace Chardonnay, the Ashton Hills Piccadilly Pinot Noir both from the nearby Adelaide Hills region (the region pretty much runs into the Barossa Valley region) and the Cirillo Semillon from the heart of the Barossa Valley.

Our second day started with a leisurely morning and breakfast overlooking the vineyards followed by a winery tour booked through our hotel. They chose the awesome Barossa Experience Tours, a husband and wife tour company for our half day tour. We booked a shared tour as it’s always interesting to meet new people, however symptomatic of the post bushfire and now virus times we had the tour to ourselves – not all bad.

The tour company has a basic framework and then amend to their guest requests where possible. As we have visited the Barossa many times over the years both for pleasure, and in my case for work and my research, we are familiar with history and so asked our tour guide to focus on wineries and local produce.

As a result we visited three wineries, Maggie Beer’s Farm Shop and the Barossa Valley Cheese Company.

We made made token purchases at Maggie Beer and the Cheese Shop as our local supermarket’s excellent gourmet section has produce from both available. We did however splash out at the three wineries we visited.

All three wineries we visited were small.

We visited Kalleske wines first. Its tasting rooms are in the delightful small town of Greenock. An hour chatting away with the cellar door staff led to our joining the mailing list and a purchase – the Grenache and Shiraz making up the bulk of the purchases. From there it was onto Gibson Wines another small winery. Because we had spent so much time at the first winery we had a short visit, however that was enough time to discover their Minestrone, a red wine blend, that will make for easy drinking.

Our last stop on the wine tour was a special request of mine to visit Cirillo Estate Wines. We had a glass of the Semillon at dinner the previous night at Appellation and to say it was to die for would be an understatement!

Cirillo is able to be visited by appointment only. We were greeted and shown around by the owner, the very down to earth, Marco Cirillo. It was a fabulous hour starting in the winery as vintage was just getting underway, then onto the barrel store for a tasting before walking through the vineyard. Having Marco show us around the vineyard including the 150 plus year old vines was the afternoon’s highlight. We weren’t able to taste the Semillon but we were able to buy some, plus a few bottles of the Rose, Grenache and Shiraz making up a dozen we will certainly enjoy.

With a boot full of wine we were deposited back to our hotel where we relaxed before dinner in the hotel’s casual meals and bar. We couldn’t resist some more of the Ashton Hills Pinot!

No it wasn’t a 6 plus week grand tour but it was a great couple of days with my favourite person.