Sunday 17 June 2012

The Hunter Valley

9th-11th June 2012

Following on our love of wine we had organised a weekend away in the Hunter Valley, the closest wine region to Sydney.

It was the long weekend so we packed up the car early on Friday afternoon and headed off. Unfortunately so did the entire of Sydney! it took us 2 hours to drive 10 km's......After almost 4 hrs on the road we finally arrived in to the Hunter Valley and found our way to our golf club resort where we were staying.

We settled in and around 10 pm Rowena and Dan and little Jasper arrived to share the weekend with us, needless to say it was a bit of a late night and we made our way through quite a few bottles of wine.

The sun was shinning on saturday morning and it was a great day, we were able to walk to the wineries from our resort, so by 11 am Sarah and I were on the wine! Our first stop was Tempus Two, the 2011 Pinot Gris was good here, we also enjoyed Wild Chardonnay 2011.

We visited 1 more winery (McWilliams) before we had a picnic lunch in a the park, while some bathed in the sun and had a sleep others ate and played in the park.

The afternoon saw us visit 3 more wineries. (McGuigan, Brokenwood and Tamburlaine)








We then made our way clinking with all the wine we had bought back to the resort, eventually we got a lift from the resort shuttle bus back to our resort.

Dinner was to be a bbq cooked on the new Webber purchased the day before, we had several bottles of wine with dinner and settled in for a long night!

The next day the weather was certainly not as good as the previous day, with clouds over head we ventured out in the cars. Our first stop was up to a viewing point where we could see over most of the Hunter and out to the coast.

Next we headed to the Mount Pleasant winnery, here we tried quite a few different wines and sampled some of the Phil Ryan exclusive range soon to be no more as the wine maker leaves after 40 years of service.

We then moved on to Ivanhoe, a small family run winnery but perhaps our favourite of the weekend.

The wines had been made with a different ideology to most other vineyards in the area. they always seemed to ask the question how can we do things differently. So they may have had an oaked shiraz, or a very soft shiraz, really clever wine making.



We sat in the vineyard and layed out our picnic, within 10 minutes of doing so the rain arrived, it was light and in true British style we stuck it out!

After visiting a few more wineries that we decided were not up to scratch to our pallets :-) we headed back to the villa. Once again the evening would consist of a lot of wine, and ...spirits! We ended up playing "Black Marriah" one of mums games. Even though Dan claims he had no idea what was going on or even how to play it he white washed everyone! Sarah was pre occupied by playing and dancing to the 'Time Warp' and 'Crystal maze' so claims her mind was not on the game but still finished second.

On the final morning it was clear the weather was now turning against us, we all made the decision to leave early and headed back to Sydney. Half way back the heavens really opened and it poured we could barely see the car in front and the traffic came to a stand still. After 3 hard hours we arrived back to a very wet and windy Sydney.

Here is a list of the wines we really enjoyed. They cost between $20 and $35.


Mcguigan -2003 Bin 9000 Semillon was good

Sarah invested in 2005 Personal reserve Chardonnay!

Brokenwood - Recommend Semillon and Oysters

2011 Sangiovese was great and Nobilo,

We bought 6 bottles on the 2009 Mclaren Shiraz it was so good

Tamberlaine - Verdelho (Pinot Gris like) was nice,

Sauvignon Blanc from Orange was a good recommendation.

Chambourcin from the Hunter and the Syrah from Orange

Mount Pleasant - Phil Ryan verdelho, Chardonnay 2010, Shiraz 2009

IvanHoe - 2011 Chardonnay \ Semillon blend

2011 Chambourcin,

2010 Oaked Shiraz

1 comment:

  1. Very Informative article Thanks Buddy

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