For the last few years Spring War has been one of my favourite events. The drive isn’t too tedious at roughly 9 hours from BrisVegas, the event is usually laid back and cruisey but the real draw card is that it sees us plonked in the middle of the Hunter Valley for the weekend so at least one day is skivved off war for the Spring War winery tour 🙂
My first year at the Spring War Winery Tour I managed to bring back two cartons of wine and a couple of fancy bottles of cellar door only ports (didn’t have a lot of car space that year). Subsequent years saw us packing the car as light as possible so I could fit in 3 or 4 cartons of wine on the trip home. But this year here was no Spring War for me (didn’t think my back would enjoy the drive :S) so the wine rack was starting to look rather empty and in dire need of restocking.
Yay for November Crown in Innilgard! Sir Phil, his lovely lady and I added an additional day onto our trip to go chortling around the vineyards of the Barossa. We didn’t have time to do a full assault on the area so we had a cunning plan to whittle it down to some of our favourites and were keen to try their ‘cellar door only’ stocks. We stopped at Grant Burge, St Halletts and Peter Lehmanns before breaking for lunch at a little cafe in Tanundra. We also managed to squish in Penfolds and Saltrams in too as well as a strange little place selling honey mead and… of course… did a fly by through Maggie Beers Farm Shop for stocking up on gourmet goodies. It would have been nice to have more time and see more of the little unknkown wineries but…. Virgin waits for no man and we had to high tail it back to the airport.
It was a really fantastic day… good friends… great conversation (Ladies)… beautiful countryside… fabulous wines (and fortifieds :P) to try… and cheap delivery rates to BrisVegas. I sent a carton of wine each from Grant Burge, Saltrams and Peter Lehmanns and now just have to wait for the boxes to turn up. I can’t wait to get into the Grant Burge Age Unknown Muscat which was definitely a highlight 🙂
So yeah… other than missing my boys it would make a pretty good Groundhog Day… well maybe if there was fresh mangoes, a massage and sex in there somewhere 🙂
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