We kicked off the weekend in a delicious way, with dinner at one of Ellyn’s favourite restaurants from last time, Café Michael 2. (Yet to be determined, the location of Café Michael 1…) It is a small Thai restaurant with delicious food and wine. John tried a new dish (new to him): drunken noodles. Now we understand the name! He was absolutely in love and was “drunk” off the goodness of the meal. And he loved the restaurant! He said that was one place Ellyn had not talked up enough and wondered why it took us 2 weeks to make it there! We have already ordered take out from there…

We picked up our rental car and were on the road to the Adelaide Hills by 9:30am. We stopped in Hahndorf for an apple strudel for breakfast (yum!) and then headed north to Charleston and the Bird in Hand winery. On the drive up, we decided it was better we were running a bit late as we may have looked like slight alcoholics had we showed up at the winery right at 10 when they opened. We had a great experience there, with great wine. John was impressed that there is no charge for wine tasting in Australia, though we decided it made us feel more compelled to buy their wine, which was fine by Ellyn!

From there, we headed over to the small town of Lobethal, which was very cute. The winery we were headed to though, Tilbrook Estate, not so much. Their “tasting room” was on a main street and there wasn’t a vineyard in sight. After just having left the beautiful surroundings above, we kept driving. We were next in search of BK Wines. Admittedly, it was more for their BBQ Goat Sandwiches, not their wine, that we were after. The weekend we were there was the annual Winter Reds Festival so many vineyards were having food and music on site as well. Unfortunately, it appeared the festivities were mostly on Sunday as BK was still cooking the goat! So we did a few tastings there but were not overly impressed and Ellyn embarrassed John by walking out without buying anything. He was in such shock that Ellyn would taste so much, especially since the girl opened multiple bottles and finished off a new release (that was not set to be released until the next day) of Shiraz, but still didn’t buy anything that he couldn’t even think to suggest buying one. What can you do? The wine wasn’t that great!

We headed into Hahndorf to the Udder Cellar! Ellyn read you could do some cheese tastings here and thought it might be fun, as well as a way to take a break from the wineries, John was driving after all! When we stepped in, they were very busy so we waited a few minutes. When it was our turn for a tasting, the girl gave us three cheeses to try. Really?! Three? We just waited in line for that? Come on!

Given the lack of cheese tasting, we were hungry and headed to Grumpy’s for pizza and beer. It was a cute little place with their own brewery (though the only indication of that was the name of the beer and the tap it came out of.) Nonetheless, we had a nice lunch and then it was back on the road. The next winery was one that came highly recommended and the minute we turned onto the road, we knew why. The Lane was a beautiful little winery sitting up on a hill overlooking vineyards, a pond, the hills, etc. It was wonderful. Of course it probably helped that it had been somewhat cloudy that morning but as soon as we turned onto the dirt drive to the winery, the sun started shining. When we pulled up to the vineyard, the building had a large deck to stand out on and enjoy a glass of wine and a larger deck with tables and chairs, where they served lunch. We were a bit sad we’d just eaten at Grumpy’s when this looked so amazing! (We decided we would come back when the weather gets warmer and have a nice lunch.) Before the first glass was pored, Ellyn said to John, as she was looking out the floor to ceiling windows, “I’m just going to say now that I am going to like every wine here.” Lucky for Ellyn, John did too! Picture below is at the beginning of the dirt road leading to The Lane and the first picture at the beginning of the blog is John and Ellyn on the porch of The Lane.

As much as we didn’t want to leave, we did want to hit a few more wineries so we headed to Shaw + Smith. They also had a nice view but I am sure we would have been even more impressed had we not just left the view at The Lane. We entered their tasting area, again with floor to ceiling glass doors, and were approached by a young guy that explained their wine tasting. You sat down at a table with a placemat that gave you the description/backgrounds of 5 wines and you received a platter of different cheeses to compliment each glass of wine. You could do either white, red or both. We did a selection of both. It really was a wonderful way to have a tasting as we were able to enjoy the wine (very generous serves) and cheese, while having beautiful scenery just out the doors. (I believe, in spring and summer, they open these glass doors and let the air in, which must be awesome.) The picture below gives you a bit of an idea of what the view was like…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKkWOvJx-bA

After finishing up at Shaw + Smith, we headed to Nepenthe. It was a larger winery (in fact, Ellyn had purchased a bottle of wine from there earlier in the week and spoke with her mom and discovered she’d also purchased one from there!) Needless-to-say, it was a bit large, though still not huge, and the cellar door was still quite charming. It was a bit crowded, but we managed to have a few tastes and enjoyed some of the wines.

>

Upon leaving here, we headed to the winery that was open the latest (trying to get them all in!). We headed up to the cellar door, again with a gorgeous view, but were told we needed to wait a moment for a tasting. Apparently, they want you to enjoy the tasting while having someone explain the wines to you on a one on one basis. The wines were good but it was a bit awkward set up, especially since our guy apparently wanted to get into acting but couldn’t make it so he decided to act out his love affair with these wines. Seriously, there were moments when Ellyn could barely keep her laughter under control. (But again, that may have had something to do with the wines…good think John volunteered to drive that day!) Oh, and we met a couple that had just returned from visiting their son and daughter-in-law in Chapel Hill, NC! Small world!


We headed home and literally crashed. A long day of wine tasting sure is hard work!

Sunday, John returned the car. (The place we rented it from closed at 4pm on Saturdays and instead of taking it to the airport like Ellyn wanted to do, John thought parking it illegally overnight was a good idea. Of course, the entire night, every time Ellyn heard a truck of any sorts, she was convinced our car was going to be towed and then we wouldn’t be able to rent any more cars the entire time we were here because a car would have been towed on John’s license and Ellyn still has a speedy ticket outstanding on hers from last time she was here.) But alas, sometimes John IS right! The car made it through the night! When he got back to the apartment, we got ready and headed out to get some bikes! Adelaide has city bikes you can rent for free and ride all around the city and surrounding suburbs. We hopped on and headed over to North Adelaide. It was gorgeous day (probably low 70s, we’re still getting used to this Celsius thing, so our conversions might be a bit off, and sunny) and we had a great time riding through North Adelaide and through the parks. The city is very cycle friendly (too bad Ellyn isn’t as cycle friendly…on the way up one hill, Ellyn got off the bike, claiming it was to take a picture, and then decided if she was already halfway there, she should just walk up the rest of the way.) We stopped off at a burger bar for lunch and then headed back to the City because we had a footy game to get to!

The picture Ellyn HAD to take (i.e. needed a break from the hill, but it DID turn out nicely!). And John later admitted that the hill was much steeper than he originally realized.

We made it to the top!

The footy game was the Showdown between Port Adelaide and Adelaide (our team). Imagine the Clemson/Carolina game but when the teams share the same stadium, so the rivalry is even more heightened. We were super pumped about the game because of the success our team, the Adelaide Crows, had the previous weekend (if you recall, they beat the #1 team)! We were definitely disappointed – the game was a let down. Adelaide’s accuracy was not on and they were behind the entire game. We even left the game 5 minutes early and Ellyn does not enjoy leaving a game early, for many reasons, one of which is people scream things at you like, “Why are you leaving early, the game’s not over. We’re still playing footy!!” Oh hush! My team is losing and I’d like the beat the rush back to the City, THANK YOU VERY LITTLE!! Anyway, the highlight of the game for us was the freshly made, hot, cinnamon doughnuts. While they don’t go that great with beer, they were definitely delicious!

This week has been pretty quiet. John’s been working a bit later and we worked on the photos for wedding album and got those choices sent off last night. Hopefully, with that now completed, we can be timelier with our blog posts!