To Hunter Valley...hic!

We spent the day yesterday in Hunter Valley on a tour of some of the wineries.

So after climbing aboard the minibus at 8am and a trip over the Harbour Bridge (nice not to be walking over it this time :) our first stop was at another wildlife park for a cup of coffee and a lamington, all the while there were kangaroos and wallabies having their breakfast.

Then it was back aboard the bus for a trip along the convict trail, which was a road built by convicts heading north of Sydney, until we stopped in Wooloomgi at a pub for a sample of Dr Jurds Jungle Juice. Apparently he used to go round the wineries collecting all the old wine, and wine that didn't work, and the stuff from the tasting spitoons and stick it all in a barrel in his back garden, add some secret ingredients and then bottle and sell it. He was doing a roaring trade until health and safety showed up and shut him down. Now the pub sells a fortified wine named after his creation, and it was quite nice!

Onwards, to our first winery and our first tasting. Which was at the Brokenwood vinyards, where we tasted a fine selection of whites and reds, something like 12 or 15 or so... There were some very nice wines there and we ended up buying one or two bottles ;)

By now the wine was having it's effect, and it was off for some dinner at the Blue Tongue brewery, along with 4 wines to taste with it. Once we had polished those off it was straight to the bar to sample the local beers, they had a really nice alcoholic ginger beer, oh and also sample a few more of the wines as well... it was getting harder to remember which were good by this time.

After lunch it was off to a chocolate shop, where we sampled some of their chocolates, they had a bar that was pure cocoa, which I liked but Dan wasn't keen on, judging by the face he pulled whilst eating it. But they also had chilli chocolate, which was fantastic. A bag of which accidentally fell into the basket and ended up being paid for.

Then finally it was on to our last wine tasting session at the Coopers winery, a really small place with only one vinyard growing Chardonnay grapes, they buy in all the other grapes they use to make their wines. We also got to try some nice local cheeses with the wines we tasted, and the host who was explaining the wines seemed to be pretty knowledgable. This place sold a sparkling shiraz, which after the few I have tried back home I had to get a bottle.

By then it was late afternoon and we started the return trip to the ciddy... a couple of hours later we were back in the hotel, getting ready to go out... to the Shark Hotel!