On Saturday, 13 August, we went on a wine tour in Hunter Valley. The wine tour was arranged by the student association Newcastle University Affordable Wine Appreciation Society (aka. The Goonion), and we went by bus from campus at 9 am.
After about 50 minutes on the bus, we arrived at our first destination, Tamburlaine Organic Wines. We were ushered into a warehouse where stacks of wine-filled oak barrels were stored. In the warehouse, we were greeted by a man called Tumbleweed from the vineyard who were going to guide us through the wine tasting. He was an alumni from UoN and was one of the founders of The Goonion, so some of the other participants knew him from before.
We tasted eight wines at Tamburlaine, a sparkling white, a sparkling rosé, three white, and three red wines. One of the white wines was a fruity but sweet, late harvest Riesling wine, which we really liked so we bought a bottle. We bought the wine from Tumbleweed, and it turned out he was going to Sweden in two weeks. He asked for some advice for good places to eat in Stockholm or Gothenburg, so Gustav suggested two places nearby Klarna’s office in Stockholm.
Next stop was at Hunter Distillery, which (yes, I know) is not a vineyard. They produce and sell flavoured spirits, and that was what we got to taste. So you might ask, “After drinking eight kinds of wine, how were you able to drink eight kinds of spirits without getting drunk?” First of all, I didn’t tell you there were eight kinds of spirits; we tasted ten. But to answer that question, we got a 1-millilitre sample of each spirit, and they were served in a chemistry style test tubes, see the above picture. Out of the different flavours, Linnea liked the Chocolate Vodka the most, while Gustav preferred the Blackberry Schnapps.
The third and last stop was at Kevin Sobels Wines, but we arrived a bit early so we walked around in Pokolbin Village and browsed in the stores there before the tasting. The tasting was quite similar to the other wine tasting. They started with a sparkling white wine and continued with two white wines followed by three red wines. They ended, however, with two fortified wines; a white and a red port wine. The red port wine was really nice.
After the tasting, we browsed some market stalls before we ate. At one of the stalls, we found a dog that we played with for a bit. For lunch, we had some BBQ. Still, the definition of BBQ seems to be sausage or veggie burger on a slice of toast bread. But it was nice and tasty.
When we got back from the wine tour, we ended our evening by watching the sixth and final film in the Maria Lang series that we’ve been watching. It was good; a nice film to watch after an eventful day.
Love,
Gustav and Linnea
