Yarra Valley

About a month ago John and I finally found the time to enjoy one of the wine regions of Australia--the Yarra Valley located about an hour outside Melbourne. We went with a  biking wine tour and made a nice day out of it!

We were picked up in the morning, meeting the rest of our tour group, a family of 3 English people, very nice, and the small group size made the day go much better than the larger wine tours. 

We made our way out to Lilydale to bike the Lilydale-Warburton trail during the morning. The trail is an old train line that was pulled up and converted into a bike path through the Yarra Valley. The whole trail itself is quite long but we just did a smaller, and downhill/flat section of it to make for easy biking. It was a great fay for it, nice, but not too hot with a nice breeze. We managed to get a few nice pictures along the way:

All in all we biked for 24 kilometers, stopping after the first 7 to have a nice morning tea before heading on. The tour guide, who was a really nice guy though a bit nervous as it was his first tour on his own, prepared a delicious lunch for us as well, that we enjoyed after biking and before our winery visits!

Apparently since we went on a Wednesday a lot of the smaller boutique wineries were closed, but our guide did manage to take us to some nice ones all the same. John and I were desperate to try some good wines, because in comparison to NZ, all the ones we had tried up to that point were less than to be desired. Bottle shops in Melbourne city don't stock a lot of the local/regional smaller winery wines like they did in Hawke's Bay, so we had to go to the source!

Our first stop, Killara Estate,  the guide chose mainly because they had a really nice view of Yarra Valley and their vines were situated in a nice place. Indeed, the place had really nice views, though I can't say the same for their wine. The cellar door hand was even kind of a dud. So out group left the first place with slightly lower expectations about the quality of wine we would be able to taste that day. 

Luckily, the next place called Punt Road, was a whole lot better! We arrived to a nice bright cellar door to do some wine tasting but also cider tasting as well! The winery produces both really nice wines and both apple and pear cider, processed in very much the same way as wine, giving the ciders a really clean, crisp taste without all the added sugar! They were really good and everyone in our group went home with a mixed pack of ciders as well as wine. We ended up buying a nice bottle of Shiraz. The other great thing was that they made apple and pear cider ice cream! It was delicious and a really nice way to cap off lunch. We sat outside in their nice garden area enjoying our pear cider ice cream before heading to the last winery.

Oakridge was the last place, and while they were a bit bigger label than the other wineries we had visited, they had some really nice wines and the cellar door guy was a hoot! You can tell why they hired him--the man knew how to entertain and how to sell wines. John and I ended up buying a nice Pinot Noir from them. No whites, as we are still unconvinced that Aussies know how to make a decent Chardonnay. The ones we tried were alright, but we would hold out for our vacation back to NZ!