Barossa Valley Wine Tasting, Part Two

If you read my post from earlier today, you know that I already visited one winery in the morning on the Barossa Valley wine-tasting tour I took today. I tasted six wines at that winery. I hope my writing hasn’t become slurred.

Buckle up. There are two more wineries with wine tastings to come.

Considering the amount of wine I consumed by the time I wrote this, i.e. after I visited those other two wineries, and the fact that I didn’t take contemporaneous notes, don’t expect much detail here. I’ll do my un-levelheaded best.

A count of the wines I tasted and a couple of boring stories, if even that, is probably all you’ll get. Then again, I haven’t written it yet. Let’s see what happens. It may surprise me, if not you.

Let’s get going so I can finish this and get a start on my hangover.

Saltram Winery Wine Tasting and Lunch

The first of two wineries the wine-tasting tour visited in the Barossa Valley this afternoon was the Saltram Winery.

To start, this tasting included five wines, one fewer than the six at the winery this morning.

Wait. Did I just say “to start?” Why, yes. Yes, I did. I’ll get to that.

Again, like this morning, each tasting was just a sampling size—a few sips—not a full glass.

The first wine was a Riesling. The tasting leader from Saltram, Simon I think his name was, described it as something along the lines of, “fruity, but dry and with a zing to it.”

That was a generic enough description that I was able to nod visibly and think to myself, “Yes! That’s exactly how I would describe it.” I wasn’t lying to myself. That was indeed my opinion of it.

Simon then went on to list the many individual fruit notes in the Riesling. He lost me with that. I tasted none of them. As is usually the case when someone gives me tasting notes for a wine, I once again felt inferior due to my perpetual total lack of wine discernment.

But then, in response to a question from someone else on the tour, Simon said those are just descriptors. The wines don’t have any of those fruits in them. (I hadn’t thought they did.) Nor did the grapes pick up those flavours from growing close to crops of those fruits. (I thought that was it.) No, they’re just descriptors someone came up with to describe what the wines taste like to them.

What the what? There’s no physical basis in reality for those snotty wine descriptions oenophiles like to throw in our faces? Fine, then. They’re wrong. There. I said it.

Because I’m talking about the Riesling at the moment and I’d already tasted the others by the time I wrote this, I’ll throw in a spoiler here. I liked the later wines, but I loved the Riesling. This surprised me because I usually prefer red wines. Turns out I really like fruity, but dry white wines with some zing to them. Or at least, I really liked this one.

The next wine was another white, but of a variety I’d never heard of, Fiano. I remember it because Simon said the name is like “piano” but with an “f.” Fun with mnemonics.

Simon says (see what I did there?) it’s a variety that’s quite common in Southern Italy. I think he also said the variety originated there, but I might be misremembering. I enjoyed it, but not as much as the Riesling.

We then moved on to the red wines. The first red was a Shiraz. I’d describe it as full-bodied and flavourful. For all I know, someone else might describe it as crap with durian overtones. It’s all so subjective and personal, isn’t it?

Next came another red wine, but I’ve totally forgotten what it was and what I thought of it.

Following on that, we sampled a sparkling Shiraz. Huh. Another sparkling red wine. Before the sparkling red I had at Chateau Yaldara this morning, I had no clue whatsoever that anyone made a sparkling red wine. And now I’ve tried two in one day. I seem to vaguely recall thinking the same thing about this sparkling red as I did of the one this morning: a red wine with bubbles, but lighter and more fruity.

We were invited to take our glasses with the sparking Shiraz sample into the next room, where we had lunch (included in the price of the tour). Saltram seated us at a table long enough for the whole tour group (14 people). They set out trays of cold meats, vegetables, cold chicken, bread, olive oil, and tapenade. Every place setting had the usual complement of knife and fork, but also our own set of tongs to grab the food. It was quite enjoyable.

Remember I said “to start” above. There was another wine tasting after lunch. This one included only two wines, another Shiraz and a Tawny (port). I don’t remember what I thought of the Shiraz but I kind of, sort of recall enjoying the Tawny quite a bit.

Mangler Hill Lookout

On the way to the next and final winery on the wine-tasting tour, the driver/guide, Brian, pulled over at a beautiful lookout on a hill. Because we were running behind schedule, Brian gave us only five minutes to step out, take in the view, snap some pictures, and get back on the minibus.

Before we stopped there, Brian told us where we were. But when I got out I realized I hadn’t been paying attention and didn’t have a clue.

Hey, come on. Give me a break. By that time I’d tasted um, er, six, plus five, plus two equals, um, er, carry the one, um, er, 13 wines. Sorry. Those ums and ers were pauses while I took off one shoe and sock so I could complete the count. Even though they were just sampling size tastes, that still amounts to a lot of wine. You can’t expect me to pay attention to every word.

Realizing I had no clue as to the name of where I was, I was sober enough to pull out Google Maps and look it up. Google Maps labelled the spot I stood on as Mangler Hill Lookout.

The view of the valley below was glorious. And then we got on the minibus to head on to taste more wine.

Rosenvale Vineyards Wine Tasting

Rosenvale Vineyards is an independent, family-owned vineyard and winery. Their vineyard is huge.

When our minibus pulled in, the wine-tasting leader and another member of the staff greeted us by handing us a tasting of a sparkling white wine. We had that on a patio beside the vineyard.

From that vantage point, rows of vines running parallel to the length of the patio stretched as far as the eye could see. And by that, I mean that there were more rows ahead of us than I could see past, and the rows pretty much stretched wider than I could see except for the road we drove in on that interrupted the rows.

After sampling another white on the patio, we moved inside into a room with places to sit and floor-to-ceiling windows so we could still look out onto the vineyards.

The wine-tasting leader was the general manager of Rosenvale. I forget his name. He was assisted by the head of something or other who did the pouring. I forget her name and her job title.

The general manager, who shall remain nameless because, as I said, I forget his name, explained a lot about the viticulture of Rosenvale Vineyards. With each wine, he went into detail about the wines and pointed out into the vineyards to show us which section grew that varietal. I forget all of it. Every single word.

I think I greatly enjoyed the wines, which included whites and reds, but no sparkling reds and no Tawny ports. But after all that wine it would take a superhuman to appreciate what I tasted and then remember it and the commentary that accompanied it for more than ten seconds. I’m not superhuman.

Hence, I have to be fairly vague here. The wine tasting at Rosenvale started with whites and moved to reds. I remember that much.

They gave us a sheet listing each of the wines, with the prices of the bottles, in the order we drank them. But it was for ordering bottles if we wished, not to take home as a souvenir. I didn’t take one so I don’t have that as a memory aid. However, I do remember noticing that the wines that we tasted progressed roughly from the least expensive wine to the most expensive one. The last wine we had sold for $105 (AUD) per bottle.

I remember many years ago hearing someone, I don’t remember who, say that if you have a dinner party and you serve several wines throughout the dinner, start with your best and work your way down to serving plunk by the end because by then no one will know what they’re tasting.

We tasted—brace yourself, because I no longer can—eleven different wines at Rosenvale Vineyards. If we started the day with that expensive wine, I might have loved it. As it happens, I think I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I was totally with it by then. After all, that was the …. damn, I don’t have enough fingers and toes. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that was the 24th wine I tasted on this wine-tasting adventure.

And with that, Brian drove us back to the city and our hotels on an uninteresting expressway.