Hunter Valley

The Hunter Valley is a wine growing region 150 kilometres north of Sydney.  You can find vineyards in every corner of Australia, and the Hunter Valley is neither the largest nor the most prestigious.   It is however the most accessible from Sydney, and has become one of the “must do” tour destinations for visitors to the city.

Today we joined up with a minibus full of wine-seekers for a day of gastronomic delights: not only tasting Hunter Valley wines, but also chocolate, cheese and beer.

To break up the two hour journey north, we made a mid-morning stop at the Walkabout Wildlife Park: another opportunity to have our photo taken with a koala and make friends with mobs of kangaroo, emu and wallaby.  Less than four weeks into our Asia Pacific adventures, this was also the third time we found ourselves wearing a python, this time an albino creatively named Lemon!

There are over 120 vineyards in the Hunter Valley, and most are too small to have their own winery (the plant required to turn grapes into wine).  Instead, vineyards will pay for the services of a shared winery.

Boutique vineyards in this part of the world compete fiercely on quality, and if their product is not of a very high standard, vineyards can soon go out of business.  This is true to the point that a vineyard would rather miss an entire year’s output than to sell the product of a bad harvest, as happened in 2012 when there was significant rainfall a week or two before the grapes were due to be picked, causing their flavour and sugar-content (needed to produce alcohol during fermentation) to be significantly diluted.

90% of the vineyards sell directly to customers through a combination of cellar door sales (this is people visiting the vineyard for a tasting, and walking away with a few bottles), and mail-order (each vineyard will have a wine club – effectively a mail-order loyalty scheme, which visitors are encouraged to join).  Some might sell to local, specialist wine retailers, but you wouldn’t find their product in the big supermarkets either in Australia or overseas.  The Australian wines we do find in Tesco and Sainsbury are mass-produced by wineries that buy-in and blend grapes from several vineyards, all of which are paid by the tonne and are therefore incentivised to grow large, less flavoursome grapes.

For boutique vineyards such as those found in the Hunter Velley to achieve the required level of quality:

• Vines are grown close to the ground (mass-production can involve growing up to 5 vines, one on top of another)
• Vines receive minimal irrigation (mass-production involves heavily watering grapes so they become large and their flavour diluted)
• Grapes are almost always picked by hand, because the individual grapes in a bunch will reach optimum maturity at different times (mass production involves machine-harvesting an entire crop at one time)
• When a wine requires “oaking” (as with a Chardonnay), this is done in $3000 oak barrels imported either from France or the USA (mass-production involves dipping a “teabag” of oak chippings into steel vats of wine)
• Every year’s harvest is different, and so every year’s wine is different (mass production involves blending grapes to produce a consistent product, year-in, year-out).

Because there are so many vineyards in the Hunter Valley, Sam always begins a tour by quizzing his clients on their wine preferences.  He then selects two vineyards whose wines best suit the taste of the group.

The first of Sam’s two selection for our group was Blueberry Hill.

Although this sign would suggest only Pinot Noir is grown at Blueberry Hill, they in fact grow several different grapes.  We tasted six or seven different wines, all of which were really delicious, especially the Chardonnay which we walked away with a bottle of.

After lunch (which was preceded by a tasting of various different feta cheeses – yum!), we visited Sam’s second vineyard selection: the Mount View Estate.  Whilst most of the vineyards in this region are in the foot of the valley, Mountain View is on the slopes, with fantastic views from the patio behind their tasting room.  Better drainage will generally produce a better crop, and Mount View has been awarded 5 red stars, the highest accolade available.  The two highlights were – again – the Chardonnay, and a chilled red called Cerise described as “a vibrant soft red wine with delicate berry flavours and a beautiful cherry red colour, made by blending Shiraz, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc together”.

Our final stop of the day was at Potters Brewery, for a chance to taste some locally-produced beers.  Potters are known for creative seasonal offerings, and at the time of our visit had both a ginger and lime beer (for the summer season – very tasty) and a Christmas pudding beer (which didn’t appeal to anyone on what was a blisteringly hot day!).

After tasting at least fourteen different wines, and two different beers, and with temperatures having reached 42 degrees earlier in the day, we were happy to doze our way through the two hour drive back to central Sydney.  Much to our surprise, we awoke the next morning without a hangover!