Wino Heaven

I like my wine. I like it very much. Red, white, rosé, sparkling – I’m not fussy, I love them all. The pop of the cork, the glug of the liquid as it is first poured from bottle to glass, the rich aroma that fills the nostril as it is swirled about in the glass, the first taste of it on the tongue, the warm feeling as it hits the stomach. It follows then that I couldn’t spend a few days in South Australia without visiting one its world-class winery regions. We rejected the more famous Barossa Valley (which is home to the likes of internationally known favourites Jacob’s Creek, Penfold’s and Wolf Blass) in favour of the closer and just as excellent McLaren Vale. Due to its drier climate, it is not as green as other wine regions of the world but the wines are as fine as any. First on the list was the small, family-run Kay Brothers, which has the distinction of being the oldest family owned winery in McLaren Vale. It also holds some personal family history thanks to a story that refuses to die more than twenty six years later. If you know any of my family or were present at my wedding (where my father was kind enough to embarrass everyone present with the story) then you will already know what transpired in the early 1980s under the vaulted roof of Kay Brothers winery. If not, let’s just say that it involved a baby, a particularly explosive bottom, a dog and an aunt with a tissue and a mission.

Kay Brothers hasn’t changed much in decades and has been around for one hundred and twenty years so it must be doing something right. I’d say it did everything right. The fact that it wasn’t as commercialised or well known as some of the others in the area meant that we weren’t being jostled at the counter, trying, along with several other customers, to get the attention of one of the staff like we were in a busy city bar. We never had to ask to try the next wine and we were told about each one without a sense of hurry. From the warm welcome we received to the friendly service throughout the tasting, we felt instantly at home on those cool tiles with the smell of oak in the air, sipping wine after wine. And there, of course, is where they really come into their own. I didn’t taste a wine I didn’t like. Even the dessert wines – Moscato and Viognier - which, ordinarily, I’m not a massive fan of, were delicious; rich and smooth, sliding across the tongue and slipping easily down the throat. The fortified wines, too, were fantastic, so fantastic in fact that we purchased a bottle of the Very Old Tawny Port to take home. By the end of the tasting I had that small buzz that comes from drinking wine on a relatively empty stomach - breakfast all of a sudden felt a long time ago – but, with the entire day ahead of us, I was ready to move on to the next winery and try more!

The following winery was set in beautiful grounds, the building itself surrounded by country gardens full of bright flowers and tall, leafy trees providing an abundance of shade for those sitting out and enjoying a spot of lunch. Coriole was far busier than Kay and we had to fight for the attention of the harassed looking staff but, after a few tastings, we were so relaxed that we didn’t really mind. We opted not to work our way down the entire list this time but picked and chose ones we knew we loved or hadn’t heard of and wanted to try. By the time we walked back out into the sunshine, we knew we needed to get something to eat. Eyeing the crowds eating lunch in the garden, we decided to push onto another winery and find something there.
Shottesbrooke was far quieter and sold platters of scrummy tapas type nibbles so we nabbed a table in the sunshine, ordered a couple of sharing platters and bought a bottle of crisp, dry Sauvignon Blanc to drink with our food (because clearly we hadn’t drunk enough wine yet). In a courtyard scattered with huge pots of plants and right by a little garden, the setting was divine, the food was delicious and the wine a perfect accompaniment to it all. I felt deeply relaxed, warm and happy.

Next stop was the very Aussie-named Wirra Wirra, home of the nationally renowned Church Block, which is a blend that seemed to me like the maker just couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted – Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz Merlot. It works though – smooth, soft and eminently drinkable! We also tasted an average but appropriately named sparkling called The Cousins which Ruth and I delighted in, taking picture after picture of us, the bottle, us drinking, us and the bottle. It was definitely time for us to stop drinking fairly soon. As we left, we couldn’t fail to notice a giant bottle of wine made entirely out of corks and were informed that if we guessed correctly the number of corks that made up the bottle, we could win a year’s supply of Church Block. We weren’t going to pass that offer up so The Husband put his logical engineer’s brain to work and figured out some way of calculating it accurately. That sort of thing is past my underdeveloped maths brain normally, but after all that wine it went completely over me so I left him to it.

After our attempt to ensure a booze-filled year, we headed for our last port of call, a winery I knew very well after drinking bottle after bottle of it back in the UK – Rosemount. We got there shortly before its 5pm closing time so there weren’t many people left, leaving us to sip our wine in peace. We tried a couple of white wines specially made for the Australian climate as they were designed to be drunk with ice - perfect for a summer BBQ. They were a bit sweet for me though and I much preferred the drier, lighter Pinot Grigio. So much so that we bought a bottle, along with a bottle of red long since drunk so I’m afraid I can’t remember the type. What Rosemount is very clever at is its marketing, which is probably the main reason it has done particularly well internationally. Its bottles are so beautiful, they call out for you to pick them off the shelves. The Pinot Grigio, for example, is very lightly tinted blue, with an attractively designed gold edged, duck-egg blue, diamond shaped label, giving it a regal feel. The bottle, too, is unusually shaped, with a typical cylindrical top, tapering down to a square bottom. The whole effect is to give it a decadent air. In fact, I like it so much I’ve kept the bottle to stick a candle in it and use it on the table at dinner parties!

When the staff at Rosemount kicked us out, we knew it was time to go home so, feeling pleasantly warm and tingly, we made our way back. First item on the agenda upon returning? Why, a G&T of course!