Whilst in Sydney we booked a Hunter Valley Wine Tour with Kangariffic (good reviews here). The Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine growing region with well over 100 wineries, as well as restaurants, chocolate factories, dairies, cheese factories and olive farms. At $99 the Kangariffic tour is really good value for a day packed with different taste experiences!

We were picked up just around the corner from our hotel by Sam, the owner, who was very friendly and obviously has a passion for wine! It was a small minibus group with a wide diversity of nationalities and after picking everyone up we headed off north out of the city towards Newcastle and the Hunter Valley.

We stopped off for morning tea after about an hour at Walkabout Wildlife Park with free roaming kangaroos, koalas (we petted a fluffy female!), wombats, tasmanian devils, snakes and lizards. It was a really cool place set over 80 hectares so the animals can basically be as they would in the wild. We patted the kangaroos and held a spotted python (so cool!), then had a cup of tea on the verandah.

Koala!

Kangaroo

Spotted python

Our next stop was the Hunter Valley Chocolate Company, a small chocolate maker where we watched them creating things through the glass viewing window and were then able to taste various different chocolates and fudges-yum! The chocolate is imported from Belgium and just designed into the individual creations there but it was still tasty. I bought a chunk of chocolate orange fudge to take away 🙂

Then we boarded the bus to head to our first vineyard- Ernest Hill, a small boutique family run winery owned by a father and son. We tried two white wines, a rosé, two reds and two dessert wines- I made notes so we could remember what we liked, but the best was definitely the “Cyril” Semillon . It was like nothing I’ve ever tasted, so light and refreshing with a taste of elderflower- we bought a bottle! The dessert wines (“Luna Spark”) were really nice too, and it was generally a really informative tasting.

Me cradling “Cyril”

Wine tasting!

After that it was time for lunch and a cheese tasting at Tempus Two,  a much larger commerical winery. We tried two fetas with pesto and sundried tomato, a fromage frais and a marscapone soft cheese- they were ok, but nothing amazing. We are rather spoilt for choice having such good cheese at home, and even trying some of the blue cheeses on the deli counter couldn’t match up. We ordered a pizza from their cafe to share for lunch, and then went to the cellar door to try some of the Tempus Two wines. The atmosphere was a lot more impersonal- you could just ask to try whatever you fancied from their list, they’d pour it and walk away. We tried a semillon, a wilde Chardonnay (no yeast), and dessert late harvest semillon- all nice, but I could still remember that Ernest Hill Semillon!

Our purchases

Our next stop in the afternoon was Mount View Estate vineyard, another small family run business set in a beautiful location with great views, despite the grey and drizzle! Here we tried lots of wines (a bit too quickly in my opinion) and the woman gave us lots of information as well, about the differences between red and white wines (tanins – that’s why red sometimes feels fuzzy in your mouth), and how ageing a wine completely changes it’s taste. I attempted all the reds but am still not really a fan! I did however like the Reserve Semillon again 🙂 and the V-Series Chardonnay and V-Series Verdelho so we got one bottle of each. Verdelho isn’t a variety we come across much in the UK, being only grown in Australia and Portugal where it originated.

Our final stop was Potters Brewery – the only operational brewery in the Hunter Valley. They had various different beers we could try at 2 for $3- I had a ginger beer and Mark had a pale ale. Mine wasn’t very gingery though, I was hoping for more of a kick so Mark ended up finishing it!

Potters Brewery beers

Then it was time to head back to Sydney, a bit of a long journey due to traffic but a good day overall.  I definitely learnt lots and am hoping that we can apply that to drinking and purchasing good wine back home!

Beki x

NB: Thanks to Mark for letting me use his photos 🙂