The Barossa Valley

After driving over 1700km from Guyra, we arrived in the Barossa Valley, the home of the makers of some of my favourite wines. We found a good hotel, the Vine Inn, in Nuriootpa which was close to all the vineyards we hoped to visit.

Our first visit was to Wolf Blass, founded by a German immigrant in the mid nineteenth century. Their winery was so vast that the Courage’s brewery in Reading would fit in a small corner unnoticed. All the grapes from their many vineyards in Southern Australia arrive here where they are graded and used to make wines that are enjoyed around the world. One bottle of Gold Label Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 to sample later.


On to another of my favourite wine makers, Penfolds, a few samples needed here to help me decide between the Bin28 and the Bin128 Shiraz. Not really a hard decision as they were both good but eventually, after much indecision, the Bin28 was selected for sampling later.

The boot is very full but we must press on to Jacobs Creek.

The Creek alas is far from its glorious torrential past but everything else about this vineyard was huge and immaculate. The visitors’ centre was beautiful and functional.

The vines here are only one of many similar vineyards owned by Jacob’s Creek. These seem to stretch as far as you can see in each direction.

In each row there are thousands of vines and there are thousands of rows. We saw several vineyards in New Zealand but nothing we saw there came close to the scale of these huge plantations. In the visitors’ centre we were able to sample the wines from Jacob’s Creek we know well in England as well as a superb Grenache from their Gramp’s range that sadly we don’t get in the UK. Marion then noticed that the restaurant had a special Christmas Pudding on the desert menu and so we had a great meal at a very good price in their lovely glass walled restaurant enjoying the view over the regiments of uniform vines growing quietly in the sun. This was the most impressive of the three vineyards for a visit; do drop in if you can.