The Cellar Door

Tasting at the Cellar Door

Australia has good wine, and with a week in the country, fitting in a day to taste some Aussie wine seemed a good activity. I enjoy a good full bodied red, and the Hunter Valley, an area a short way north west of Sydney and about an hour away from Regis’ cousin’s house, is renowned for its excellent reds; Shiraz, Merlots, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Shiraz is one of my favorites, and this is the grape this area really excels at, so this was a good spot to go do some Australian wine tasting. There are over 150 “Cellar Doors” (Australian for “tasting rooms”), so we had lots to choose from in Hunter Valley.

Having visited wine regions in Ontario, California, Spain and of course back home in Nova Scotia, we had some experience at how vineyards and wineries tend to take over an area,

All About The View

replacing other farms and crops, but the amount of wineries here is amazing. You can drive down section of road and find winery after winery side by side. Just the list on the Official Map and Tourist guide is slightly overwhelming . . . so many wines, so little time . . .

The up-side to so many wineries it that there is a great deal of competition, so the cellar doors offer mostly free tastings. After the $8.00 per taste fee in New Zealand this was a pleasant surprise. Some of the wineries do charge for “Superior” tastings, but the ordinary samples are free.

Cool Name, Good Wine

We left the choice of wineries up to “Cousin Wade”, our guide and designated driver, and he chose one he was particularly fond of, Audrey Wilkinson, but since he admitted that he liked this winery because of the spectacular views from the main building, I did not mind offering my method of choosing wineries with cool names, and requested visiting the “Cockfighter’s Ghost” cellar door I had seen on the way to his choice. As it happened, both were excellent, with Cockfighter’s Ghost having the most delicious Shiraz and Audrey Wilkinson having a delicious red blend I enjoyed enough to purchase a bottle for later.

Ready For The Steak!

Unfortunately, doing wine tasting when traveling far from home does not allow me to purchase much wine as my suitcase is stuffed already. I returned from Niagara-on-the-Lake with a trunk full of wine, but walked away from Hunter valley with only a bottle that will probably not survive this evening’s Aussie Barbecue.

Wine Tasting

Waiting to ripen

The area around Niagara-on-the-Lake is rapidly being taken over by vineyards. Where they used to grow peaches and other fruit, the wine industry is encouraging the planting of grapes. The last peach canning plant closed years ago, and many farmers have cut down the peach trees and planted grapes. Everywhere you look there are neat rows of tidy grape vines, and all these grapes are being processed into wine by the many wineries in the area. Spending three days in the area tasting wine, we found at least two new wineries that had only opened in the past few years. The production of wine and the popular tourist wine tasting tours is becoming a major industry in the area.

Sit with a glass

Visiting some of the wineries in the area and tasting the wine has been very entertaining, and I have learned a lot about wine and wine tasting. One thing I have learned is that the person guiding the tasting makes a huge difference. On Saturday the wineries were very busy, and although we did taste many glasses of wine and bought some good bottles, it wasn’t until Sunday when we actually found some good hosts and did some real wine tasting.

The difference is subtle but important. All the wineries have someone behind a bar who will pour wine into a glass and let you taste it; the good ones have a person who pours you wine, talks to you about it, decides what you like and dislike and guides your tasting based on what he and you learn. Some have a list of wines you can taste and start at the top and work their way through allowing you to decide what you like, and hopefully want to buy. The good guides (I actually have no idea what these folk are called), start by asking you what your preferences are in wine. Then instead of just working through the list, they tailor the wine you taste to your preferences. They also ask you about the wine and based on what you liked or disliked suggest different options. I found that servers who expressed their own preferences and opinions ended up being very helpful. “Oh, I really like that one too, and I really like this other bottle, would you like to try that?”

Hmmmmmm. . . .

I enjoyed the knowledgeable servers who instead of just pouring a little wine in your glass, and stand back waiting for you reaction, add comments such as telling you what grapes are in the wine, and even food pairings for the wine. The very best servers had stories about the wine and how it was developed or how the wine maker developed the wine.

On Saturday I had wine poured for me, but on Sunday I had at least three servers who actively engaged me in the tasting and from these people I learned something about the wine and about how to taste wine. I discovered that I actually have pretty subtle and distinctive taste for certain wine, and those servers who worked with that were able to sell me some very nice wine.