phik

Today we holidayed in the Barossa Valley, about 60 km from Adelaide. It wasn’t long into the drive before we were in fairly rural South Australia, passing by all manner of SA’s agricultural production. But mostly sheep.

In one of the pastures we caught a glimpse of the Great Australian Wool Pipeline, with which Stuart was not familiar, so maybe you aren’t either. Completed in 1954, the Great Australian Wool Pipeline runs from Adelaide to Melbourne, and transports fully 25% of the annual Australian wool production to market. Unfortunately, the two-year drought has been hard on both graziers and the pipeline operator, and it’s facing stiff competition from rail and trucking. It’s a national treasure; I couldn’t believe Stuart had never heard of it.

At any rate, our first stop in Barossa was the venerable Jacob’s Creek, who are, if not the area’s most delicious label, at least perhaps the most famous. A suitable place from which to begin, particularly as this designated driver was abstaining this morning.

We took lunch at the 1918 Bistro, fortunately arriving early enough to secure a table on this very busy Mother’s Day. A bit on the expensive side, but a solid dining experience. I cannot vouch for its wine list, knowing full well that the afternoon would consist of more free wine than I could possibly safely consume.

From there to the Two Hands winery, who definitely had the nicest staff of the day. I was surprised to find it empty on Mother’s Day, and they were more than happy to educate and share their entire range. We also discovered, along with them, that one of their wineglasses — I forget which — will, in fact, hold an entire bottle of wine. The woman looked mildly embarrassed to reveal that she’d been filling them about halfway when she poured at home. ahem.

Given the overwhelming choices for the rest of our afternoon, we decided to focus on a class of wine that I’ve come to love, that was essentially invented in and remains native to Australia, and that is rarely available in the United States: the sparkling shiraz.

The nice folks at Two Hands recommended more than enough wineries with a sparkling shiraz to fill the rest of the afternoon. The only problem was, they had all already sold their entire stock for the season. sad.

Fortunately, they also recommended Seppelt’s rare fortified wine tasting, which was superb. I now have a new benchmark for port, the 1986 Para Single Vintage Tawny.

The final stop on our way out of Barossa was a last-minute addition to the programme, the unique Barossa Fruit Wines. They have a dazzling array of fruit wines, almost all delicious: apricot, blackberry, blueberry, cherry, mulberry, peach, plum, quandong, quince, raspberry, rose petal, plum, and strawberry. The winemaker was charming and enjoys making charcoal drawings of locally-built locomotives in his spare time. My only regret is that I was already pushing max gross weight on the plane, so I limited myself to a scant three bottles.

As a final word of warning, permit me to expound on the most fucked-up Thai “meal” I’ve ever had. Four words:

Deep. Fried. Chicken. Satay.

Adelaide residents and visitors beware: do not eat at Aroy-Thai.