OK. So we were meant to be in Nurioopta for these two days, but I got a bit over confident after talking to people in caravan parks who just rock up to caravan parks at the last minute. Of course who would have thought that the Barossa Valley would be so popular on weekends, and especially that part of the Barossa where Maggie Beer has her farm? We couldn’t get into Nuri, nor was I able to extend our stay in Adelaide, and I was too nervous to look into Hipcamp options, not really having my bearings and also with Mark’s fear of getting dirt on the caravan. So, we ended up in Gawler for our stop over, and we decided we would make a day trip to Nuri later in the week when we catch up with our mate, Velvet.
Again, Gawler was just a stop over on our way to Adelaide, but as I checked in I noticed an A-frame outside for “A Wine Wagon”, one of the companies offering wine tours. So I fired off an email to book, and they had spots available for the next day – a Sunday. At 10:00 am on the Sunday the wine wagon picked us up and we found that there were only two other people on our tour, a Canadian couple from Alberta who were in Australia to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, and who own their own mead distillery. They were lovely company as our tour guide, Jim, drove us round pointing out the sights of the Barossa and giving us a little history of the area, and we visited four wineries along the way and tasted about seven wines at each one. That of course sounds like a lot of wine, but I guess if you added up the little bits of each wine, it might have amounted to about two full glasses. I’m not sure that we were the best tour from the wineries’ perspectives, with Mark being a non-drinker, Clay not being the biggest fan of reds, Clay and Brenda needing to have any potential purchases shipped to Canada, so that left me. I did my civic duty and made sure that I bought a bottle at each one, and it’s not that I am cheap, but I prefer whites, and at all of the wineries, the whites were cheaper than the reds.
At the third winery – Lamberts, is owned by an American and a Peruvian who met in wine school and have built up their vineyard and have a very flash cellar door with spectacular views over the valley. We enjoyed a charcuterie lunch and it was a perfect choice to go with a glass of wine. Jim said they used to go to an Italian restaurant and have a three-course lunch, but all anybody wanted to do after that was have a nap. To be honest, I could have done without the fourth winery anyway, but that it more because we luxuriated a little long over lunch and the lady was rushing us through so she could close up for the day. I also didn’t really like their reds very much.
At the end of the day, Jim dropped us, not only back to our caravan park, but right up to our caravan, so that it is pretty good service. He is clearly used to patrons who he has to pour out of his bus at the end of the day. All in all a great day and I can thoroughly recommend catching the Wine Wagon if you are ever in the Barossa.
The Tent, The Trailer, The Caravan 