Three days away - an overview
We have been away for three days - hence the lack of posts. With friends we toured to our north to stay in the little country town of Milawa, well just outside, famous for Brown Brothers wine as well as others, and also for gourmet food. The view above was taken somewhere along the way and more or less typifies the countryside we drove through. And as you can see it's all looking a little dry at the moment. But wide vistas of blue hazy mountains and beautiful gum trees dotted here and there. Whilst there we packed in the King Valley, the Ovens Valley, Mount Buffalo, Bright and Nagambie all of which featured at least one winery. So there is lots to report on and I will do some more specific posts. This one is just to ponder on a few things and show what you can do if you have a few free days.
Because our friends are into wine and food, this was a major focus of our trip, but not the only one. And I have just thought, for example, that if you are into beer then there are probably craft beer distilleries as well - yes there are - I just checked. They grow hops around Myrtleford after all. And then there are bike trails, walking trails, skiing in winter, hang gliding, ballooning and all manner of outside activities - horses too, not to mention that this is Ned Kelly country. We saw so much in our short visit, that I have now forgotten which of the areas had the horses - but one area was obviously famous for breeding race horses. And it's all beautiful.
This is the view from the top of Mount Buffalo which has a quaint 20s or 30s chalet built for the people of Victoria, but now, alas, closed. Although they have obviously preserved a few rooms on the ground floor at which you can gaze through the windows. The drive up was a bit tortuous but less frightening than I thought really, in spite of the many hairpins and the perpendicular drop to the valleys below. But surprisingly it was the only spot we found with no proper café. There was a van which served coffee and a few other things, but that was it. Everywhere else it seems there is food - gourmet food in a lot of instances. You can hardly open a cellar door these days without a restaurant too.
Sometimes the restaurant is better than the wine. Not that any of the wine was awful. No I take that back - there was a wine that I tried somewhere - Dalzotto perhaps that was pretty awful. But I aim to write about all those weird and wonderful wines you can find out here another time. We had lunch at Chrismont in the King Valley on the way up, which has recently won an award for its new cellar door although we couldn't quite see why. Yes it was a really nice building, but didn't really blend with its surroundings we thought and wasn't that different from any number of other such places. But I have to say the food was divine.
But I won't linger over the individual wineries that we visited here other than to say that it's almost a case of of 'seen one, seen them all' with respect to actually tasting the wines. I'm not a wine connoisseur really so I just tried the more unusual wines on offer, to see if there was something wow that I had not encountered before. No is my answer. And we have a relatively large collection of wines at home, so don't need to build up our cellar. Besides these days you pay top dollar at the cellar door, rather than at Dan Murphy's. So I guess that was the other thing I did - tasted wines only available at the cellar door. We did buy a few but not a lot. Unlike our first encounter with Australian wineries when we arrived here back in 1970 I think. We travelled up to the Murray, along the river, down through the Barossa to Adelaide, and then back along the coast, taking in Coonawarra along the way - buying wine at every winery we visited. We bought dozens which, in those days were shipped for free back to our home. And we paid by cheque, so were probably not conscious of how much we spent. And when we got back home those dozens started to arrive - about a dozen of them I think. This formed the basis of our cellar, so that we have only had to buy the odd dozen now and then or the odd bottle here and there to keep the original size the same. Besides we are getting old and won't necessarily have time to drink what we have.
And the other danger too, if you are driving at least, is that even though you are only taking tiny sips it soon mounts up. They say that if you drink 6 tastes, then you have drunk a standard glass. You can spit it out of course, but that always seems such a waste to me, and besides for the uninitiated like me I don't think I get the full taste if I spit it out.
That said, what is nice about the cellar door experience is chatting to the people pouring the wine, who are unfailingly interesting and charming, and also exploring the winery itself, not to mention its setting. And I will give all of the places we visited a post of their own at some time over the next few months. But not today. But here is a gallery of those we visited - from left to right and top to bottom - Pizzini, Dalzotto, Brown Brothers, Mitchellton, Tahbilk.
As we were returning home, having dropped off our friends, David asked me what it was I liked best, and I have to say that I think it was the scenery, the country life - a bit desperate I think at the moment - and the people. And I also have to admire all those little and large businesses that have sprung up way out there in a seeming middle of nowhere. And did I mention that there was an Aboriginal art gallery at Mitchellton too. But some of the people out there are struggling - no more evident than in the tourist town of Glenrowan, which looked seriously uncared for.
Go there - it's beautiful and pretty close to home. Three hours tops. And thank you to the GPS which took us cross country along byways previously unknown.
