Barossa - Feb 19

Summary: great drive, more vino, back in town, Adelaide

This time we drove up to Barossa via Adelaide Hills and Eden Valley. Beautiful drive, but someone is going to have to explain to me how a wide open straight flat road with no people (the Nullarbor) has a speed limit of 110 and a seriously winding mountain road through wine regions has a speed limit of 100. I’m not normally one to say the speed limit is too high, but I never got to 100 on that road. It was hot again, but we did get to a playground in the morning.

Not to come off as a wino (too late, mate!) but I love Australian wine and I believe three of the 5 best wine regions in the world are in South Australia: #1 Barossa, McLaren Vale, and Coonawarra (Thursday). Unlike Napa or Sonoma, I don't really get much chance to visit them. That’s why they are getting four days together. I took one Barossa day to taste Penfolds, but there are easily ten others I would like to visit. Sadly, I gotta drive, so those ten were cut to four and at those four I tried almost exclusively Shiraz (and did a few other things to stay well within the limit). They were all good, but at Peter Lehman and Two Hands every wine I tasted was outstanding. Peter Lehman had one wine (Greenock) in which the vines are grown near eucalyptus trees, so the wine has a really unique taste. Anyhow, I could go on, but the trip was quite good.

We got back to the Hilton, hit the pool (no ducks), hit the concierge lounge, and walked around by the row of restaurants (somebody was juggling a torch and knives by one of the NASCAR-type cars in Adelaide for a race this weekend). Anyhow Alex is in great spirits and he will have a blast tomorrow.

From driving around Adelaide, I can see that it is a pretty sophisticated, upscale city. I love the way the downtown is – basically 4 blocks by 9 blocks ringed with parks (good way to keep property values high). Very attractive, lots of trees, low rise, sort of European in its appearance – there are lots of old churches but I get the sense that people still attend them (in contrast to Europe). This was one of Australia’s earliest cities and had more relative influence in Australia’s earlier days (Sydney and Brisbane have grown in influence more recently). With all of that said, I think some divided highways (“dual carriageways” as they are quaintly referred to here) would be nice to improve traffic flow.

Tomorrow: Glenelg Beach in the AM, Cleland Wildlife Park in the PM. Thursday we drive to Coonawarra and on to Mt. Gambier. Then we cross into Victoria, take the Great Ocean road, wrap it up in Geelong, and pick up Aneta in Melbourne on the 24th.