Barossa Valley Wine Tour

The bus picked the three of us up at 8:40 this morning, we joined a young Chinese couple, an Italian mother and son (he's on a semester exchange at a university here) and an Australian woman (her husband was taking their 3 and 5 year olds to the zoo for the day). This lovely little group was then joined by a group of 11 hung-over/still drunk law students from Perth who were in Adelaide for a convention - moot court competitions, plus some educational things - which were over and it was now party time. There were 2 buses with 20 students each doing wine tours, and the excess students were on our bus. Jeremy was loud and obnoxious (a couple of his classmates apologized for him when they left the bus tonight), but mostly the group was just having a little too much fun. Anyway, we had a very good tour guide and a good tour today.

We began at Wolf Blass winery for a structured wine tasting (they choose the wines) - we bought a muscat. Then we went to Maggie Beers farm shop for wine tasting as well as pate tasting, chutney tasting, jam tasting, etc - you could sample all her products. We ended up with 2 pates and some crackers. Next it was on to Barossa Valley Estates for another tasting and a lunch - very good anitipasta type platters. The photo is Dave mid-taste at Barossa Valley Estates. After that to the Longmeil winery for a tour of their old vines (167 years old next month), another tasting and a tawny port purchase, as well as a Viognier to have for dinner tonight. We finally went to Chateau Tanunda for our last tasting and another little bottle of wine to drink with our pate and crackers. By the last tasting I was refusing most of the wines - they are quite generous with their wine tastings here.