Up early and after a brief breakfast we headed to the Barossa Valley - Australia’s equivalent of Napa Valley.  It is 76 km North of Adelaide or about an hour and 10 minutes thru the light morning traffic.  No freeways in Adelaide.  

Our first stop on the list we got yesterday from Bob Pierce was at the Seppelt Winery to see the history of Barossa.  We quickly left since they make fortified wines and the history tour was not scheduled to start for an hour.  As we drove on we came across Barossa Valley Estates.  This too is part of a larger conglomerate but they make good Chardonnay and Shiraz.  After getting lost and turned around in the unpaved, unmarked country roads, we got to the small town of Tanunda.  Here we stopped at the local information center to checkout the rest of the wineries on our list to be sure they were all small wineries.  The post office was next door so we took the opportunity to send some excess things and souvenirs back to the States.  We have to get our baggage weight down before our flight tomorrow afternoon.

Our next stop was at Bethany.  They have a good Riesling and Chardonnay.  Then up over the Mengler Hill to the town of Angaston where we stopped at the Blond Coffee Shop for lunch.  Next door was a sewing store that Kathy visited just to touch the sewing machines.  Then we drove further East past horse farms to the Henschke Winery in Keyneton.  They were in the midst of harvesting and crushing red grapes.  Blue vats full of red grapes were all over the parking lot.  When we went inside, one of the counter girls recognized us as being the couple ‘on an around the world tour for their 25th anniversary’.  It seems that Josh and Erin, who we meet yesterday in McLaren Vale, had been to Henschke earlier in the day and said that we may be coming by.  What a small world!  Kathy feels this is the picture of the day (with Cynthia and Kylie).  Henschke makes good oaked/unoaked Chardonnays and Shiraz.

Driving back to Angaston, we stopped at Yalumba.  They have a great Eden Valley Wild Ferment Chardonnay and a good Semillion-Sauvignon Blanc blend.  On the way to our next winery, we drove by a winery with a quilt shop which our navigator insisted we visit.  40 minutes later, Kathy had a couple more fabric samples and we were on our way to Torbreck.  They have a very nice Semillon and a wide range of Shiraz.  One they call Run Rig (2003) is made from 100+ year old vines.  Very smooth but very expensive, $225 a bottle.  We bought a nice $18.50 2004 Shiraz for dinner.  Elderton was our last stop for the day.  They were nice to us even though we arrived 15 minutes before their closing time.  Their 2002 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon won a gold metal at the 2005 San Francisco International Win Show.  We liked their unoaked Chardonnay, Friends Barossa Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon.  

Sorry for the length of today’s blog but the tasting notes are necessary if we are to share what we tasted.  All of these wineries have some distribution in the US.  The next few days’ blogs will be shorter as we leave Australia.