This week I was lucky to go on my first Groovy Grape tour, the Barossa Valley single day tour! After a nice bike ride through the rain I arrived at the Groovy Grape office to hop on the bus to the Barossa. The tour guide, Ngaire and I, picked everyone up at several locations around the city and drove towards our first stop, the Big Rocking Horse. Next to the rocking horse is a café, which is a nice place to get some coffee and brekkie to wake you up.
After their caffeine shot everyone had a bit more energy and we drove towards the Barossa Valley heading to the Whispering Wall. On the way to the Whispering Wall you can enjoy the beautiful surroundings, see some kangaroos jumping in the fields and the beautiful water reservoirs through the trees.
We arrived at the Whispering Wall, which was built between 1899 and 1903 and is the retaining wall of the Barossa Reservoir. When they finished building the wall they discovered something special about it, if one person stands at one side of the dam and another person at the other side (approx 150 meters distance) and whisper, they could hear each other loud and clear. The wall is now a popular tourist attraction.
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| View from Jacob's Creek Visitor's Centre |
We drove up to our first winery, Jacob’s Creek. The Barossa Valley produces about 45% of Australia’s wine and Jacob’s Creek probably produces over half of that 45%! The winery is located up in the hills, which is a beautiful location. We got a tour through the winery and they told us about the history of Jacob’s Creek. Afterwards we tasted some of their delicious wines.
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| Tasting Room at Kies Family Wines |
After some wine tasting the group’s mood improved, so we pumped up the music in the bus and drove to the next winery.
Kies Family Wines was the second winery we visited. A small family owned winery, which opened their cellar door in 1985. We were able to taste a selection of their wines and had time to make some purchases. Their wines are very reasonably priced too!
The third winery that we visited was Richmond Grove, which is situated on a beautiful property that looks like a little castle. Here we took a Basket Press Cellar Tour, where we experienced over 100 years of winemaking history. It was really interesting to learn about the process of wine making. After the tour we tasted some of Richmond Grove’s wines, learnt about how to distinguish which vintage the wines are and how to taste wine properly.
Normally Groovy Grape does a barbie on the riverbank at Richmond Grove for lunch, but because the weather didn’t allow for this we went to the pub and had some lunch there instead.
After our big lunch we went to Seppeltsfield, which is famous for its 100 year vintage tawny (same taste as port, but because it is not made in Portugal you can’t call it port). You can have a shot of the 100 year old vintage tawny for $30 or, if you are a backpacker on budget, you could just have a smell and imagine what it would taste like. We also tasted their wines which were again totally different than the wines at the other wineries, as they were mostly of the fortified variety.
Written by Jelle Verhoeven
