One of the few things that excited me about Sydney was the Hunter Valley Tour, which I insisted on going and dragged my sister along. The tour isn’t cheap; I remember paying about AUD125 per person and that includes hotel pickup to Hunter Valley and three winery visits.
The vineyards available ranges from family owned to larger wineries where you get to taste between 6 to 8 types of wines. It was a really long drive (circa 4 hours) and our first stop was at Drayton’s, a family owned business and the smallest of the three wineries we visited that day.
Our second stop was Lindemans, before breaking for lunch at The Hunter Resort. According to my sister, the lunch she had when she went for a similar tour last year, was much better. And they were more generous with the wines.
McGuigans was our last stop and I bought the most wines there. I would have purchased more, but I knew I had no more luggage space to bring them back. In the end, my sister had to carry some back for me when she returned home several months later.
The McGuigans 2012 Cellar Select Gewurztraminer was my best purchase of the trip. And while I’m writing this, my husband is enjoying a full glass all by himself. Wtf. :roll: I’ll need to hunt for this one at my regular wine shop – Tong Woh.
Overall, it was a decent experience albeit touristy. Not particularly educational because they went through mostly the history of wines and their award winning products, and not so much the wine tasting process and notes. I was looking forward to the latter as it’s easy to Google the former.
I went home with nine bottles of wines that day, plus another four I randomly picked up in CBD. No wonder my father insisted on sending me to UK for further education. He was afraid I had easy access to wines. But what he didn’t know was there were just as much liquor stores (or more) in the UK hahaha!
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