Wine tasting

Since I got behind, I figured I would just post from here on out. Yesterday, my friend Keith had the day off work and decided he would be my tour guide. After some questions about things that I liked and was interested in, it was decided we'd go wine tasting. I'm sure that's shocking to most of you. We had an early start with a 9AM pickup time and we were off. Well actually, we had a minor detour in the house because the night before, as I was vacuuming, I accidentally unearthed yet ANOTHER gigantic spider while home alone. I believe my panicked and incoherent text message to Tanya said, "Vacuuming. BIG spider. Me scream and scare dogs. Help!" After I watched him crawl towards one wall, I got out the big can of insect killer and sprayed liberally, and obviously from a distance. The spider seemed to tuck his many legs under him and turn into just a large black ball. I was thinking there was no way it could survive such an offensive as I had just launched, but was wary. I waited a few moments, but he didn't move and I continued with my vacuuming. So please imagine my panic when I returned a few moments later to find him missing with just a nice clean spot in the middle of the foam that was SUPPOSED to be an insect killer. I managed to find him again and launched a secondary attack, this time with success. Of course, I wouldn't go near it to pick it up and throw it away, and even Tanya who is used to these kinds of things, wouldn't when she got home either. It was rather large and scary. So that was Keith's first task of the day before wine tasting.

I digress. Off to the vineyards on a nice warm day, and our first stop was De Bertoli vineyards at 10AM. This area of Australia is specifically known for it's sparkling wines, chardonnays and pinot noirs. As we were driving into the vineyard with rows of grapes, I noticed rose bushes in front of every row of grapes and some of the rows had a small sign hammered to it identifying the kind of grapes that were being grown. I mentioned to Keith that these were pinot grapes on our left, and you should've seen his face. He thought I could tell what kind of grapes they were just from looking, and you could instantly see the fear that his expertise in the area had gone right out the window. I played along for a bit, but then told him about the signs and that I was clearly a better reader than distant grape definer. In case you were wondering, the rose bushes are an organic way to see if there's a problem with the soil or bugs, and it doesn't hurt that they're pretty and smell good either!

One of the vineyards we stopped at was Chandon, and it reminded me very much of Napa. Here we had a nice pairing of wines with cheeses that were out of this world (see above picture)! A purely Australian invention is the red sparkling wine. Now I thought I would hate it, but I actually loved it so I would recommend that everyone give it a try if you find one in your local liquor store. Several vineyards later, we stopped for lunch at the Yering Station Vineyard, the oldest in Victoria which had this amazing view, and we had an even better meal. With one more stop before heading back to Melbourne, we savored every last taste. Course I was giggly and trying to find a dance radio station on the way home, but that's the way all good wine tastings should go in my opinion!