Coonawarra

The next day we were up early all excited for, wine tasting Woohoo!!!!! everything we had been told about the region and having to book tasting and getting charged for them was wrong. Our first stop was Majella wines, this was suppose to be on of the best Cabernet Sauvignon's in the region and top red value wine for the last five years. It didn't disappoint at all. The tour was great, Steve showed us their entire facility and also made us the first coffee we enjoyed. It was called a long white,  it was delicious.

We then tasted through their wines, which started with a Riesling, rose, a blend of cab sauv/merlot, then the value shiraz, then another higher value blend, then their top tier shiraz and then the sparkling shiraz. There wasn't a bad wine in the line up. It was all good, we walked away with the lower value cab sauv/ shiraz.

Next stop, Wynn's Estate. This is the oldest winery in the region established in 1891. This was a really informative winery, it was really nice inside with lots of displays and a tasting from the first vintage on display. their vines looked like tree trunks and we later found out that these are called prayer vines because you have to get on your hands and knees while you work them like your praying.

We then went to brand Laira, it was one of the recomnedation from the guy (Steve) at Majella. The Cabernet Sauvignon was the best we tried but the highlight of this winery was the event room they have. The owner who jsut sold the winery is 94 and has a private wine colection in the origanal farmhouse building on the site. It was really neat and dusty, check out the pictures below.

 

What a sweet room to have dinners in.

Man I hope I have this much wine one day

Next stop was lunch, we went to Hollick wines because we were told they were serving lunch. However when we got there, no lunch. We tried their wines that weren't as good as some of the others, the only one i liked enough to buy was a the Semillion/Sauv. Blanc blend. It was pretty tasty for a 22 dollar price point. We then headed back into Penola and stopped for some lunch. We went into a little cafe downtown and grabbed a wrap and sandwich.

Terra Rossa soil that makes Coonawarra so unique.

We then travel back down the road and stopped at Katnook Estate, We walked in and were very thankful for the A/C. The lady behind the bar tasted us through all their wines which we both enjoyed. The lowest tier Shiraz was not as good as the Cabernet Sauv. But the higher tiers were amazing. The 40 dollar wines were not that much better than the 20 dollars ones so we just got two of bottom level cab. sauvs. The top tier was 100 a bottle and were both spectatuclar but were too broke to buy wines like that right now. The Cabernet was like velvet on your tongue and finished with a long ripe plum vanilla character. All the cabs here have a really distinct mint character on the nose.

The rest of the day was driving. We spnt almost 4 hours in the car driving into adelaide. It was a very beautiful drive. It was very flat most of the way up to adelaide until we got about an hour outside. The hills we were climibing were kilometers long, the car ran good again. We kept climbing and finally it was all downhill for about 10 minutes straight into adelaide.

We pulled into a parking garage and walked over to the back packers. We both were pooped and thankful to be somewhere for a few days that we didn't have to lug our luggage again. I went and got some subway while Jess at some leftovers and we settled in for the night.

Almost there now!