Hunter Valley: A Wine & Foodie’s Paradise!
After a visit to the Blue Mountains and a day-long road trip, we were finally in Hunter Valley. Dan and I decided to treat ourselves to breakfast at a nearby coffee shop & cafe before heading out to visit several wineries, breweries, and other local destinations. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but Australian coffee is kind of a hot mess (pun intended). For most of the trip, we managed to drink very nice coffee, mostly sticking to flat whites. But that was only after our second day in Sydney, when we made the mistake of trying something called a short black, which is like an extremely powerful shot of espresso with a somewhat thick consistency. Thankfully, we learned our lesson early, so our coffee for breakfast on this particular morning was just fine!
Wine, Beer, and Cider Abound
We started our Hunter Valley adventure at the Hunter Wine Country Market at De Bortoli Wines. The country market featured about a dozen artisans of various types selling a wide variety of wares from soaps, clothes, wood carvings, and more. There was also a stand selling these huge, delicious cookies. We wound up buying a bag of ginger and fig cookies dipped in both milk and white chocolate. Yummy! After browsing the market stalls, we headed into De Bortoli Wines to do our first tasting. Dan tasted a variety of red wines and I tried some sweet and bubbly moscatos. Where we currently live in Virginia, most wineries will offer a tasting for a set price (usually between $5-10). As we soon found out, most wineries in Hunter Valley don’t charge anything for a tasting in hopes that you will buy something — or, if they do, they waive the fee if you purchase something. De Bortoli was one of the former, and very understanding of our hesitation to buy anything to put in our luggage. The very nice woman who did our tasting told us that they do sell internationally, so we’ll definitely have to look for some of their wines here!
Our next stop took us to at a place called IronBark Hill Brewhouse. I have to be honest: the reason we went there was because they have a beer on tap called Brexit. I don’t drink beer, so I can’t say how it was, but we did buy a flight of four different beverages on tap, including one pear cider that I greatly enjoyed.
Post Brexit-beer, we made our way to Oakvale Wines for a tasting. Sadly, they are a small winery that doesn’t export any wines. I say sadly because this was probably Dan’s favorite place where we tried wines, and we’re bummed we won’t to be unable to get any more bottles (until we visit again, anyway!). Next on the list was Hope Estate, which offers both wines and beers. We skipped the wine tasting to go straight to their brewery and try another flight. Just like last time, we did a flight with three beers and one cider. I really enjoyed the cider, and Dan also seemed to like their beer. As we were driving to our next destination, we saw the word “DISTILLERY” in big letters on the side of a building and decided to check it out.
Hunter Distillery turned out to be very busy but a nice change of pace in wine country. We tried various high-quality liqueurs, painstakingly eyedropped into test tubes by our hostess. We ended up buying a bottle of our favorite, the butterscotch schnapps, and then decided we were ready for lunch. We went over the Hunter Valley Gardens, which in addition to, y’know, gardens, has a decent-sized “Shopping Village” where we were able to grab a quick lunch somewhere that wasn’t a winery’s super-fancy restaurant.
Shopping, More Wine, and Cheese!
After lunch we checked out the rest of the available shopping, poking around the bare-bones Village Books, sampling the wares at Hunter Valley Chocolate Co., getting some cupcakes to go, and buying the requisite Christmas ornament for Dan’s mom at the Hunter Valley Christmas Shop. We took our pictures with the Australian-style Santa outside, complete with Crocodile Dundee hat and shorts.
Our next stop, Harkham Wine, seemed a bit off the beaten Hunter Valley track, and we had the tasting room to ourselves (the rest of the cars in the parking lot were apparently for the restaurant next door, Two Fat Blokes). We were treated to several lengthy speeches by our very outgoing host regarding each wine, all of which, he assured us, were made completely without chemicals or pesticides. Harkham is a small, family-run winery, and if you want to try them, again, you’ll have to visit Australia.
After our stop at Harkham, we drove over to the more eastern side of the valley, where we stopped at Binnorie Dairy. They had an amazing numbers of cheeses, all made on their farm, all of which were very delicious, and all of which were free to try! We stopped for a bit to munch on one of their cheese plates and contemplate whether we ever wanted to leave. Dan even saw our only completely wild kangaroo of the trip on the farm, well off in the distance. We saw plenty of “Kangaroo Crossing” signs throughout the trip, though! Feeling the effects of a great deal of alcohol and cheese, we made our way back to the hotel.
While I hung out at the hotel, Dan walked over to the nearby Australia Hotel and thoroughly enjoyed some breaded prawns. As we’ve said in previous installments, the word “Hotel” in Australia often refers to pubs, apparently dating from a time that alcohol could only legally be served to “travellers.” After prawns, Dan sat down in the pub and knocked back a Toohey’s while he watched the rugby on a giant screen with a few other grizzled patrons. One entire wall of the pub was covered in screens displaying horse racing, greyhound racing, and various odds. Australians apparently gamble more per capita than any other similarly rich country. With Canberra winning the rugby in a blowout, and Dan worried a bit about stepping on one of those legendarily venomous Australian snakes in the dark, he made his way back to the hotel.
Meanwhile, while Dan was off having fun watching sports, I was in the hotel room watching a really weird cooking show, eating a pavlova cupcake from Cupcake Espresso, and drinking one of the ciders we acquired the day before from Bilpin. Sometimes it’s nice to just indulge yourself and relax. When Dan came back, we chatted a bit about our plans for the next day, then got ready for bed. We would be leaving Hunter Valley the next day to head back down to Sydney — but not before stopping to meet some wildlife on the way!
