Travels with the Viking: Australia, Part 3: Wine in the Barossa Valley

When you only have a week in Australia, one of you has been before, and the one who hasn’t wants to know everything there is to know about wine, you have to make some hard choices. Do you stay in Sydney and New South Wales, where your flight from the U.S. will land, and visit the nearby Hunter Valley wine region? Or do you take a domestic flight in Australia to Adelaide in South Australia and visit the nearby Barossa Valley, where all the sommeliers on the sommelier forums (fora?) tell you to go? There’s no wrong answer, really. We chose the Barossa (this is an example of code switching – the Aussies shorten everything, as far as I can tell, so the Hunter Valley becomes “the Hunter,” the Barossa Valley becomes “the Barossa,” and lipstick becomes “lippie,” which is actually not any shorter, but you see what I mean).

Our winery visits in Australia were very different from our winery visits in the U.S. I’ve written before that when Loraine and I visit wineries in the U.S., we tour the winery and see their vines, where they press the grapes, the equipment they use in creating the wine, and the barrel storage caves that smell like heaven. We were told that this kind of visit isn’t common in Australia due to their environmental, health, and safety laws.

The trip to the Barossa was also different from our trips to Napa or the Willamette Valley in that we had no idea in advance where we were going to go. While the sommeliers were adamant that we had to go to the Barossa to get the best sense of what Australian wines are all about, they were silent on the specific wineries we should visit. Luckily the Viking had been to TexSom, a sommeliers’ conference, early in August. She met a representative from Peter Lehmann, who excitedly told her to visit his winery. We had just enough time after arriving in Tanunda, the city where we were staying, and eating lunch to visit one winery, so that’s where we went.

For two Type As, even two relaxed Type As, it’s unusual for us not to have an itinerary, but with no guidance and opaque winery websites, we didn’t have any choice but to go with the flow. The weather was 15 Fahrenheit degrees hotter than forecast, so temperatures were in the 80s, and the skies were blue, which made going with the flow a lot easier. Our revised plan, which was solidified in the days leading up to departure and on the plane, was to arrive in Tanunda and just ask the locals and the folks at Peter Lehmann where to go. BEST PLAN EVER. The waitress at lunch recommended Langmeil and Charles Melton. The people at the table next to us at lunch couldn’t say enough good things about Two Hands. And our pourer at Peter Lehmann recommended Two Hands, Charles Melton, Pindarie, Langmeil, and Yalumba. We had our list set for the next two days by dinnertime, with some additional recommendations coming from folks at the other places we visited.

We loved all the places where we ate, and we loved almost all the wineries that we visited. (Itinerary and blurbs below). My guess is that it’s hard to go wrong in the Barossa, and it’s definitely on my list of places that I’d love to visit again. (Make sure you consult a map before you go – the GPS will try to take you the long way, and life’s too short for that.)

Day 1 (Monday)
Road construction in Adelaide befuddled the GPS, so it took us an hour longer than it should have just to get out of Adelaide. We ignored the GPS once we got close to Tanunda and followed the instructions provided by the management of our lodging. We’re glad we did, because we got a closer look at the massive, neon yellow fields that both of us forgot to photograph. Because the color was so bright, it was easy to see the perfectly square borders of the fields – at first I thought we were seeing bright yellow tarps covering the ground.

We stayed at Apartment 1 in Tanunda – a two-bedroom, two bathroom apartment with a full kitchen. It couldn’t be more conveniently located, and it allowed for relaxing, exhausted evenings reading on the sofas in the living room.

After unloading our bags and changing into clothes more suited for the warmer than expected weather, we walked to 1918 for a late lunch. Because it was so nice outside, we ate on the patio. I had the lentil chorizo soup and the king prawn entrée (which in Australia is the appetizer); Loraine had the roasted mushroom pizza. If we’d stayed another day in the Barossa, we would have gone back to 1918 for dinner, because the food was delicious and beautifully presented. Loraine picked a sauvignon blanc to go with lunch, and it was the lightest, clearest bottle of wine I’d seen – you could almost mistake it for a bottle of water. It was perfect for a meal outside as the sun crept closer to us and started baking our limbs.

We walked back to the car and drove to Peter Lehmann. Peter Lehmann was one of the first winemakers in the Barossa Valley, and the way that he got his start is an inspiring story about loyalty and doing the right thing. Early in his career, he was responsible for purchasing grapes from the growers in the area. Because of a change in the wine market, demand dropped, and so the winemaker wanted to back out of his purchasing contracts; Peter Lehmann refused, and I think bought the grapes himself. The growers in the region still talk about it. Never underestimate the value and power of your relationships. I forgot to take a picture, but the grounds at Peter Lehmann are gorgeous, perfectly suited for tasting the wines, picking a favorite, buying a bottle, and ordering up a platter of charcuterie to accompany it as you while away a relaxing hour. I made a panic purchase of the sparkling red here, even though it’s a little sweeter than I care for, because our pourer told us that sparkling reds would be hard to find in the Barossa. Not a true story, but that’s ok. I cracked it open last night. Even though it’s a tad too sweet, I was happy to be drinking an Australian sparkling red.

Inspired by the charcuterie, Loraine and I went to the grocery store and created our own affetati platter, which we washed down with a bottle of Peter Lehmann Eden Valley sauvignon blanc. Perfection.

Day 2 (Tuesday)
Our apartment had a built-in coffeemaker, but we couldn’t figure out how to get it to make coffee strong enough for what we needed, so we stopped at Nosh for flat whites. Nosh is housed in an old mill – it’s charming, and both the coffee and the food is delicious. They had all sorts of lovely baked things, but we’d had leftover affetati and fruit for breakfast, so we only ordered coffee. I was tired, so I ordered a large AND a medium; Loraine ordered a large. I got a few sips in before we arrived at Two Hands because the flat whites were lava hot, and coffee isn’t a good pairing with wine, so we left them in the car. An hour later, they were still warm. Hottest flat whites I’ve ever encountered.

We arrived at Two Hands at 10:10am. Two Hands does offer a winery tour and barrel tasting, but only on the weekend. We figured we’d taste the wines and be on to the next winery by 10:45am. We were so wrong. Our pourer at Two Hands was a lovely English gentleman named Paul, who used to work in financial services in London until he and his wife decided there was more to life than making enough money to live in London. They arrived in the Barossa, fell in love with the valley, and have been there ever since. Paul got browbeaten into pouring more for us than was on the tasting sheet for the day by the Australian couple sitting next to us and the owner/winemaker from a different winery who stopped in to get the cell phone he’d left there during dinner the night before. Paul recommended that we visit Charles Melton (the third recommendation for this winery), Grant Burge, Tscharke, and Seppeltsfield. He recommended Seppeltsfield at the end of the day because they’re mostly about port, and said if we could make it to do the year of birth tasting, we shouldn’t miss it. The tasting came with a little bit of delicious prosciutto, the winery’s own olive oil, and bread still hot from the oven. We could have stayed there all day, but we were hungry.

The pourer at Peter Lehmann recommended Pindarie for a delicious lunch with gorgeous views. We did a little bit of tasting here, but the tastings are aimed more toward selecting a bottle of wine to accompany lunch. It was hot outside, so we selected a white and the charcuterie platter (yes, again – there’s no such thing as too much sliced meat and cheese as far as I’m concerned) for our meal. We had a leisurely, tasty lunch, punctuated by the irritated bleating of dozens of disgruntled sheep, the antics of a friendly, roly-poly puppy, and the takeoff of the helicopter that the people at the next table flew to lunch. Our server here explained to us that the neon yellow fields that checker the Barossa are planted with canola.

We tried to go to Tscharke next, but we couldn’t find the winery or even signs for the winery. It turns out that Tscharke is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so we followed the signs for Langmeil instead. The Barossa Valley was settled by Germans and English; Langmeil (long mile) is the name of a winery, a church, and a school, and probably some other establishments we didn’t see. When we arrived at Langmeil, there were two tour buses in the parking lot, which is never a good sign. I reached my wine limit at Pindarie, so I only tasted the sparkling white and the sparkling red. They were both good, but I didn’t fall in love with either, probably because my palate was done. One of the wines you’ll hear a lot about in Australia is GSM, which stands for Grenache, shiraz, and Mataro (what the Aussies call mourvedre). Every winery we visited had a GSM, including Langmeil. Langmeil does something interesting, which is to to bottle each of those wines alone, so Loraine got to taste the individual components of GSM – very cool for a wine educator/sommelier.

After being still for a couple of hours at the apartment, we walked to the Tanunda Clubhouse for dinner. Neither one of us was that hungry, but neither one of us wanted to wake up in the middle of the night unable to get back to sleep because we were ravenous. The Clubhouse is an interesting place – it feels like an institutional cafeteria with its numbered tables and industrial grade carpet. The largest wall in the dining room is covered with a photograph mural of the Barossa Valley that’s lit from behind. The backlighting makes the colors in the mural almost fluoresce. It was like looking at a peaceful, agricultural version of Las Vegas. The food is billed as pub food, but when it arrives, you realize that it’s the most delicious, fanciest pub food you’ve ever had. Loraine ordered the fish and chips, and I had the grilled prawns. The food was awesome, and the menu was extensive, so we’d definitely go back, but we’ll drive next time – the walk back to the apartment in the dark gave us the creeps. We were the only people walking on the deserted main drag.

Day 3 (Wednesday)
After flat whites and a frittata (for me) at Nosh, we arrived at Grant Burge shortly after 10. More delicious wines, with a focus on Shiraz. Grant Burge, the man, has an interesting and varied history in the Barossa Valley, getting bought out by one of the big beverage companies early in his career, and then ending up buying back his original building. I tasted nine wines here before waving the white flag; Loraine tasted several more. (We did our usual thing where I poured most of my tasting into Loraine’s glass.) I bought two bottles of their sparkling red (and now I wish I’d bought more, but space was limited in my luggage), and three piccolo bottles of their sparkling white. The piccolos are 200ml, just enough for two champagne glasses. The bottles are shaped just like a regular champagne bottle, and the tops are twistoff, but they’ve been topped with plastic that’s molded to have the same shape as a wire-capped sparkling cork. They are the roly-poly puppies of sparkling wine. Every day I regret not having purchased three dozen and dealing with the extra luggage. Grant Burge was my second favorite winery we visited.

Our plan was to have lunch with our tasting at Charles Melton, but alas, they are renovating it to accommodate a much larger crowd. Charles Melton landed in the Barossa as a young man when he and a friend were on their way to Alice Springs and their car broke down. Melton took up work in the wineries to pay for the repairs, and wound up working for Peter Lehmann. The story goes that to this day, Charlie Melton has never made it to Uluru. Lovely wines at Charles Melton, and Loraine was beginning to feel some stress about how many spaces were left in the wine check. The hardest thing about tasting wines in a foreign country is balancing the notion that the winery distributes in the U.S. with the knowledge that U.S. distribution doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to find the wines. I went into the trip limiting myself to sparkling reds and so left behind a beautiful, dry, crisp, and deep pink rose. I try to comfort myself knowing that when we go back, we’ll also be able to eat lunch there.

One of the foods I associate with Australia is meat pie, basically a hand-held pot pie. I thought Loraine should have one before we left Australia, so during the tasting I asked who had the best ones in the area. A fellow taster recommended the Tanunda Bakery, which we’d passed many times on our way to and from Two Hands and Langmeil. We will always be grateful to that friendly stranger because the meat pies at the Tanunda Bakery are to die for. The pastry melts in your mouth, and we would have been equally happy to scarf down the fillings with a spoon out of a tureen. We followed the meat pies up with a chocolate doughnut that we split. I almost passed out from the happiness.

We thought we’d end the day at Yalumba, which is one of the largest wineries in Australia but still family-owned. The property is large and well-manicured and beautiful, but we don’t recommend visiting. The only good thing that happened here was that one of the pourers steered us to our dinner restaurant and made the reservation for us.

We didn’t want our experience at Yalumba to be the way that we ended our trip to the Barossa, so I drove like a maniac to Seppeltsfield. We were hoping to do the Year of Birth Port tasting, but we missed that by a couple of hours. The woman selling tickets offered the $15 tour. Neither one of us was particularly excited about the tour, and we each secretly thought maybe this was a $15 ripoff, but we were there, and there was a tour, so we took it. We couldn’t have been more wrong, and I’ll write about our Seppeltsfield experience in more detail in a separate post. For now, I’ll say that if you visit the Barossa, you shouldn’t miss Seppeltsfield or the tour because we got way more than our $15 in Barossa Valley history and what you can build with the right apocalypse team. This was my favorite of all the wineries we saw.

We had dinner at fermentAsian, a Vietnamese restaurant on the main street of Tanunda. We were so tired from tasting all of the wines that day, and we were running late because of some snafus booking tickets for our Friday adventure in Sydney, that we drove, even though fermentAsian was a 7-minute walk from the apartment. Our booking was for 6pm, the only available slot, and it suited us fine to eat that early because of the fatigue — two and a half days of wine tasting and jet lag were catching up with us. We were so exhausted that when we realized how much cilantro was going to be in the food (the restaurant owner and her family grow it in their garden and pick it fresh every day), we almost walked out. You see, yet ANOTHER reason Loraine and I get along so well is that we share a deep hate of “that evil weed,” cilantro. The waiter was able to talk us through our dislike and promised us that we’d enjoy our meal if we gave them a chance, and he was right. You can’t talk about the food at fermentAsian without using the word “fresh,” and it was a delicious and delightful last dinner in Tanunda. Even if cilantro makes you want to open your mouth and spit out all the food that it’s polluted the second it hits your tongue, you will love the scrumptious food at fermentAsian.