Words and pic­tures © Cescabell

Before we touched down on Aus­tralian soil we knew that we were going to make the effort to go here and taste the wines of Uncle Richard’s youth.

Hav­ing spent a dif­fi­cult night in Sydney en-route to the Hunter Val­ley, we were more than ready to hot foot ourselves onto the Rover coach dir­ect to the door of our new abode ‘Hunter Val­ley YHA’. We pick up the coach from Sydney Cent­ral where I stood over­shad­owed by the EY build­ing, but there was no look­ing back.The morn­ing light was enjoy­able even through the throngs of rush-hour. Our coach was vir­tu­ally empty as we nav­ig­ated out of the city and over the fam­ous har­bour bridge. The jour­ney lead us through the sub­urbs and town after town, until the coach turned west towards the mountains.

Slowly we gained height as we passed rivers and lakes and admired the ever more reward­ing views. Tak­ing good pic­tures while on the move is chal­len­ging and tim­ing and accur­acy are everything to make each shut­ter press worth­while. My first obser­va­tion as we entered the val­ley was of the pleth­ora of horses. It was lovely for me to see them and exhale, coun­tryside again. There were many farms on our jour­ney but no vine­yards to be found beside the highway.

We made it to Cess­nock, the nearest town to the YHA which des­pite it’s appar­ent remote­ness from Sydney was still using Eng­lish street-names and store-names. We were dropped of at the wooden hostel which was set back off the high­way. It was set in beau­ti­ful sur­round­ings and oozed a warmth in the day­light. The smell of the wood was very enti­cing and relax­ing. We briefly met Michael before his daily wine-tour and so Jenny checked us in and showed us around. Our twin-double was a YHA room placed into a boutique cas­ing and envir­on­ment. Sadly this line, pos­sibly invis­ible to oth­ers, was like an assault on my eyes and a dis­ap­point­ment to the poten­tial that had not yet been real­ised. This aside it was a lovely spot com­plete with swim­ming pool and sur­roun­ded by Michael’s (the owner) vine­yard and a couple of ponds full of toads.

We off­loaded our worldly pos­ses­sions and wandered up the road for some lunch. Potter’s brew­ery came highly recom­men­ded and offered a beer tast­ing for AUD6, bar­gain. The beers were cold and deli­cious; Wit­bier, Pale Ale, Lager and Kolsch (which is now my favour­ite) all slipped down eas­ily and were so var­ied. The food was tasty and James got hooked into the rugby pre­view of the even­ings NSW versus QLD game. On our jaunt we stopped by a fur­niture shop with stun­ningly made wooden pieces and for sup­plies we suc­cumbed to the only option in this area of town, the BP shop! In the after­noon we laun­derer, I wrote my Blue Moun­tains blog, read and watched the sun dip over the hori­zon once more.

DAY TWO

Today was the day, the wine-tasting had finally arrived and I had the foresight to pre­pared us both with large bowls of por­ridge, which James thanked me for only hours later. Our tour star­ted at 11am so we enjoyed a seem­ingly rare lay-in. Michael explained some back­ground to the Hunter val­ley as we meandered the local roads pick­ing people up from vari­ous accom­mod­a­tion in the hills.

The Hunter Val­ley is high above sea level and 1 hours drive from the east coast, north of Sydney. To our sur­prise the largest export of the Hunter is in fact coal from the north of the val­ley and mil­lions of tonnes are expor­ted from New­castle every year to the Ori­ent. ‘Hunter’ as it is referred to by the loc­als, is defined by two ranges of tree covered moun­tains to the east and west, which con­ceal a wide undu­lat­ing land­scape with farms dot­ted through­out the lower val­ley and small fam­ily owned estates sur­roun­ded by swathes of vine­yards stretch­ing off into the dis­tance. There is a warm and wel­com­ing glow all around. The val­ley is fam­ous for Semil­lon but also spe­cial­ised is Shiraz and Chardon­nay, how­ever, I was delighted to here that they also grow Mer­lot and Riesling and make cab-sav too.

We began our jour­ney at Draytons where sadly we learnt the wine­maker and another employee lost there lives in a recent vast explo­sion of one of the vats and so they are cur­rently recon­struc­tion the dam­aged prop­erty. As a novice of wine-tasting tours I didn’t dis­cover the spit­toons until I had fin­ished sev­eral tast­ings fully and the effect was imme­di­ate! Wine-tasting as a rule of thumb starts with a spark­ling to refresh the palette where you then jour­ney from dry to sweet white, through rose and onto light to fully bod­ies reds and onto port and liquors. I dis­covered that I enjoy Traminier-Riesling (80–20 blend) where the Tramin­ier grape is the sweeter one. This lead me onto learn­ing that Guwertz means spicy, as in Gwertztramin­ier. I also really enjoyed the port which is some­thing that has alluded me until now. Nicely tipsy with eleven wines sampled we moved on, briefly stop­ping to watch the bot­tling and labelling pro­cess which was fas­cin­at­ing. Our mini van was full of chat­ter as testi­mony to great effect that alco­hol has at break­ing the ice.

Our second port-of-call was Rose­mont Estate, a small taste­fully con­ver­ted chapel which now housed a tast­ing room and shop. We now knew the format to wine-tasting and had all relaxed some­what as well. The wines here were just as pal­at­able, if not a little more expens­ive, but the vari­ety was not as good in my opin­ion. Our group appeared to err towards the sweet whites, but J&I also indulged in the reds in search of the ulti­mate wine that sat­is­fies both our palettes!

Lunch was def­in­itely call­ing us by then and so the Hunter Val­ley Gar­dens provided much needed susten­ance and give us some hope of mak­ing it through the after­noon safely, coher­ently and on both feet. After fish and chips we browsed a high-definition pho­to­graphic gal­lery which was impress­ive, but not my cup-of-tea, so quickly found ourselves in the chocol­ate shop where I was not in the least sur­prised to find hoards of tour­ists. Hap­pily though I found an much needed ATM which was a bless­ing as it enabled me to get sup­plies for supper.

And so to the after­noons sup­ping which took us to a won­der­ful spot with a great view of the val­ley called Bim­badgen Estate. The grounds were won­der­ful which has attrac­ted the likes of Rod Stew­art, Elton John and many oth­ers to per­form here. I how­ever was romanced by the heli­copter fly­ing someone out of there. By the time we got the this tast­ing we were both more know­ledge­able and more select­ive on the wines that we would try. The som­melier was much more pas­sion­ate here, but still no one had actu­ally bothered to teach us about wine-tasting, amaz­ing really. I guess they see so many people only inter­ested in drink­ing wine rather than under­stand­ing wine. As we left the after­noon light was won­der­ful and I delighted in pho­to­graph­ing some heather.

On our way to the ‘Smelly Cheese Shop’ we spot­ted half a dozen kangaroos graz­ing amongst the vines, it was magical. One had a joey too. They were quite approach­able con­sid­er­ing the six of us we slowly and con­sist­ently walk­ing towards them to a reas­on­ably close dis­tance. The shop in fact was not smelly and the cheese tast­ing was deli­cious but dis­ap­point­ingly rushed. They were mainly soft cheeses with chili or pesto mixed in. James spot­ted a ‘Hunts­man’ cheese which we had a laugh about. We didn’t man­age to res­ist tempta­tion at the ice-cream par­lor and indulged.

So we ended our tast­ing at the final estate Sobels, run by Kevin Sobel. The som­melier here did know her grapes and was more par­tic­u­lar about rins­ing the glass out between tast­ing than any of the oth­ers. There was an alco­hol­izer there which amused us all as we tried to get the higher score by not wait­ing the required 10 minutes before test­ing! It was here we dis­covered that cab-merlot was suit­able for both our palettes and so bought a bottle for later. The bbq put on by the hostel was much needed, but a little dis­ap­point­ing for the price if I am honest.

DAY THREE

We had a day off which was a delight. It was time to catch up with ourselves and all the amaz­ing things we had already seen and done and to put this into words and pic­tures for us to share. It was lovely. That even­ing there was a bon­fire which had a hand­ful of guests nat­ter­ing about life the world and everything. It was inter­est­ing to be dis­cuss­ing the mer­its of roy­alty, our Queen and polit­ics with a Ozzie and Kiwi. It was my first taste of trav­el­ling and quenched my need to meet new and inter­est­ing people over a bottle of good wine which slipped down eas­ily in this relaxed envir­on­ment and gave me no hangover! We both very much enjoyed our time out here and away from the pace, noise and pol­lu­tion of the metropolis.

DAY FOUR — Newcastle

Relaxed and excited about our next loc­a­tion we were ready and break­fas­ted within a con­ser­vat­ive amount of time. Michael kindly agreed to give us a life into Cess­nock to catch the coach to New­castle, cap­ital city of the Hunter Val­ley. The coach was slightly late which was unnerv­ing as neither of us want to have to call Michael back to be col­lec­ted for the later coach that after­noon. Thank­fully this was avoided. Look­ing back now though I think it would’ve been a bless­ing as New­castle did not hold the prize that the LP described.

New­castle is in fact a coal export­ing port with a small amount of inter­est­ing archi­tec­ture. Lucky for us it hap­pens to have a reas­on­able good surf­ing beach, some rugged coast­line for cap­tur­ing good images of explod­ing waves and a long break­wa­ter. This is a dilap­id­ated ghost-town where ruck­sacks are raided and tossed into the sea and inter­net cafes are extinct or closed. Our high­lights did not out­weigh the time and effort get­ting there but they included; the explos­ive waves crash­ing on the rocks, a brown snake removed from the beach by a surfer, the pel­ican and fish­er­man fish­ing together in the sea, the crazy mob of seagulls, and the truly vast break­fast, good food and relaxed staff at ‘Bogie Hole’.

Related Posts

• The Great Ocean Road: from Adelaide to Mel­bourne via the Grampian Moun­tains
  A driv­ing jour­ney of great beauty…
• The Ghan train, find­ing Franco and Adelaide
  A train ride to remember!…
• The Sanc­tu­ary
  We find bliss in the rain forests of Australia…
• A Basho Film: Blue Hunter
  Here is the next in the line of Basho Films. I am work­ing hard on the next one and have something…
• Aus­tralia Zoo
  We visit the home of The Cro­codile Hunter, Crikey!…
• A Basho Film: Sydney Har­bour!
  Thanks for all the fant­astic feed­back on the last Basho Film!  Here is the latest, I present Sydn…