Hunter Valley Vineyards

Mike and I have never been and never plan to become wine connoisseurs, but we had heard so many great things about Australia's Hunter Valley vineyards that we decided to give it a go. We took a loop from Sydney to the Blue Mountains, to Hunter Valley, and stopped at the
Australian Reptile park on the way...

Australian Reptile Park

A little misleading name for a park that has more mammals than reptiles, but I'm not complaining. We spent the majority of our time here in the central park area, where kangaroos, wallabies and emus roam freely. We also managed to catch a reptile show featuring giant snakes and crocodiles. After the show, we volunteered to hold a massive python and got a photo taken with it. The wildlife expert told us to "just relax" as he wrapped the 15 foot snake around our shoulders. I got to hold it's head and Mike held most of the body. He was really heavy and the skin was cold to the touch, but we were strangely comfortable and smiled for our picture just fine. Afterwards, we took a stroll through the park and got to meet and pet Wonder the wombat and pet lots of marsupials.

Hunter Valley YHA

We decided to stay at the YHA Hostel in the Hunter Valley, which had it's own little vineyard, pool, and woodfire pizza oven. It was a small hostel, and the majority of the residents were grape-pickers who had to get up around 4 am to start working in the vineyards. Our room was cozy and the man at the front desk was very helpful and arranged a tour company to pick
us up at 9 am the following morning.

Our Tour

I was actually really nervous sitting on the bus on the way to the first winery, but quickly realized we were in good company after meeting our bus driver and fellow wine tasters. No one in the group knew much about wine, it was a young couple from Sydney, and a group of 5 fun loving Canadians, and a mother and daughter from China who actually didn't drink wine
and spent the majority of the day touring the botanic gardens. Our jolly tour guide, Brian was incredible passionate about getting us a full experience of everything the valley had to offer - and explained over the intercom what the day would entail, to our surprise, we were in for full day adventure full of tasting a lot more than wine. We got to sample everything the Hunter Valley had to offer: wine, beer, cheese, olives, olive oils, spreads, gelato, fudge, lollies (candy), and as if that weren't enough, we would end the day sampling some fun "party liquors." We also got to see a lot more then vineyards, Brian took us to a field of wild kangaroos, a botanical garden, a village of shops, and also the set of "A Farmer Wants a Wife," an Australian version of The Bachelor.

Wine Tasting

The first stop on the tour was Kevin Sobels' Wines and we couldn't have asked for a better Wine 101 teacher, Mandy, who had a lovely assistant Alfie (a big slobbery St Bernard). She gave us a list of 15 wines we would be tasting (at 9:30 AM), and a pencil and paper to take notes. I used a check-plus/check-minus system to rate the different kinds, while Mike
resorted to a smiley face/frowny face system (there were also several "neutral" faces, and his favorite selection had a smiley face and curly hair). It was really fun and she taught us all about why people swirl the wine and how to properly train your palate and experience
the different aromas haha. After this, we toured 2 more wineries (Aubrey Wilkinson and Ivan Hoe Vineyards) and tasted about 40 different wines.

Everything Tasting

The Hunter Valley also grows lots of olives, and we got to try garlic ones, kalamata herbed ones, and spicy ones. There were bags of bread for sale for 50 cents, which you could use to sample aisles of different olive oils, pestos, and chili sauces. Later, we got to try lollies in a British Lollie shop, and homemade fudge, gelato, and several kinds of cheese.
Mike had the beer sampler at the Blue Tongue brewery, 8 beers, but I guess we are beer snobs because to us they all tasted like Bud Light (we miss you Boundary Bay!). After all of this we were really full and tuckered out, but we did have just enough energy for the last stop of the day, The Golden Grape. Where we tried some really creative drinks: Golden Tango Cream ("love in a bottle"), Coffee and Butterscotch Liqueur, and Coolaya (strawberry sparkling "breakfast wine"). Before we all passed out, our group all took a "team-building shot" of the grand finale drink, Dragons Breath (Butterscotch Liqueur with Chili and Rosemary), whew! Luckily, Brian dropped everyone off at there doorstop and we fell asleep after a great day of touring the Hunter Valley! We're still not planning to become wine snobs, but it was fun to try it for a day :)