Hunter Valley

Wow...in love with Hunter Valley! Hunter Valley is the main wine region in the state of New South Wales and I went on a boutique wine tour with my 2 work friends today...and I must say, not a bad way to spend a Sunday!

This tour company had been recommended to me by several people and they were fabulous! The price was really good for a day-long wine tour and the tour van picks up and drops off where you want them to. It is a 14 person van...we had 10 people on our tour today, all from the US! It was the 3 of us from KC, a travel agent from Louisville, a darling older couple from California, a really nice middle-aged couple from Salt Lake City and newlyweds from Seattle! Our tour guide was Damien and he was very entertaining and knowledgeable!

It was about a 2 hour drive from Sydney to Hunter Valley and was just a beautiful drive. This tour company prides itself on going to some of the smaller, boutique wineries, rather than the large, mass-produced wineries and they do customize each tour and change up which wineries they go to. We hit up our first winery at about 10:45 and it was one of only 8 out of the 120 wineries in the region that grows, produces and bottles all of their wine on their property. It was called Iron Gate...

I was almost giddy with excitement during the tasting and I knew right away that it was going to be a good day! The owner even came in and took over for part of the tasting and brought out a special bottle. Here are people from our group making purchases after the tasting!

Next, we headed to Earnest Hill Winery for our second tasting...

I loved our seating area in this winery and the presenter was good, but it was probably my least favorite of the day. Here is the group after the tasting at Earnest Hill...

Next up, lunch! And that was probably a good thing, since we had been to 2 tastings and I hadn't had much breakfast! Our lunch was included in our price and it was wonderful! We went to this area called Hunter Valley Gardens. It has a few restaurants, lots of fun gift shops and normal shops, a few other cellar doors (the storefronts where you can purchase more wine), a chocolate shop, a cheese shop, a 'lolly' shop, aqau golf, etc etc...this place was great and I wish we would have had a little more time there to explore! We ate our lunch pretty quickly, so that we could hit up a few of these spots and then got back on the van for our last winery.

This one was called Molly's Cradle and it was the most gorgeous setting, by far. It was a little bit further, so I think it doesn't get quite as much traffic. The setting and the venue were just beautiful, they had a pretty large olive tree grove and the wine was good too...I could have moved in there!

We were admiring the setting after our wine tasting...can you tell what is in the distance in this picture?

Does this picture help?

Yep, you better believe it! As my parents and I always say in Colorado...WILDLIFE!!! A whole 'mob' of wild kangaroos were hanging out right in our winery! We were able to get somewhat close and then one of my work friends had a great zoom on her camera, so we got some really good pics. Fascinating to watch! Oops, look like they noticed us!

If you look really close at this one, you can see the little joey down low...awesome!!

Unbelieveable day...absolutely beatutiful scenery, good company, amazing wines (I don't think there was one that I didn't like!) and kangaroos! I have a feeling I will be doing this wine tour again, anytime I can find someone to go with me! And I must say I am a bit of a sucker for these things...let's see, I got out of there with only...7 bottles of wine (I will share!)...and a bottle of olive oil...and some chocolate...and some cheese! Ha ha...I had fun! :-)