A Day in the Hunter Valley

The only thing we knew for sure about the tour to wine country was that the day would not involve a lot of walking! Good thing, after the previous two. Monica had contacted Richard Everett a few months before we left to book this tour. Why so early? Richard is a certified oenologist or winemaker, and the only person with this qualification running tours into Hunter Valley. We didn't know how quickly his tours would book up, since he runs them all himself, and didn't want to take a chance on missing the opportunity.

Promptly at 7:30, the van showed up with 5 other people already in it. Richard told us that we would be picking four more up at a resort in the Valley, so we were pretty much a full house. The four other people, two couples, turned out to be good friends of Richard's son, so they added a bit of lively banter to the tour, along with being a nice and knowledgeable group.

We knew it existed because we had traveled with people who
live here, but we didn't realize it was so close to Hunter Valley!

Our first stop was for coffee and nibblies before our first winery visit. This was at a place called Peppers Guest House, a very nice spot with views of the valley from all sides. It is centrally located for anyone planning to check out area wineries. After we finished our snack, Richard pointed out that some of the guests had found some kangaroos resting in the shade at the bottom of the garden. So Monica took the camera a bit closer - our first wildlife sighting!!!

 Our first winery visit was to what is probably classified as the royal family of Hunter Valley winemaking - Tyrrell's. The company is still family owned and run, having just recently been turned over to the 5th generation in the person of Chris Tyrrell. Richard introduced Chris and one of their two head winemakers to the group in passing and it seemed they all got along really well.

Here are a few photos of the vineyard. The Tyrrell family is one of the largest landowners in the Hunter Valley, and because of this they can produce a number of different kinds of wine from different soil conditions, and also grow olive trees in areas that aren't suitable for vines. Larry mentioned that even though we had thought the Napa Valley was quite large when we were there in 2013, the areas of both the Napa and Sonoma valleys could probably fit easily into just the area we were looking at, and that, as Richard had pointed out, was practically all owned by Tyrrell's.

The four previous generations of Tyrrells leading the family
business

  If anyone wants to go back to the Bordeaux postings from last fall, you can get the basics of how wine is made. The main difference in the process here are that there is no blending at the end of the process unless the wine is a specified blend like a Cabernet Sauvignon - Merlot. Australia was one of the first producing countries to bottle single varietals and label them that way. Part of the reason for this was that only certain of the 'Bordeaux 5' grape varietals grow well in the various wine regions, so since the winemakers could not duplicate the French blending style, so they decided to abandon it all together. Here are a few photos from the winemaking operation:

This was the first 'house' built by the Tyrrell's
when they established the winery

Some of the old trees and the view to the valley beyond

These are some of the oldest vines Tyrrell's owns. They were
planted about 136 years ago and are still producing
an excellent wine.

The group in front of one of the initial fermentation
vats.

Bariques, used for cellaring and aging the wine.

Storage

It is a testament to how well respected Richard is that he didn't have to stop anywhere to get permission to do anything. He just took us into what used to be the family's second house on the property, grabbed his bottles of wine, led us into the tasting room and started Winetasting 101.

We discovered that learning how to properly taste and drink wine involves quite a process (and Monica loves processes!). While Richard started describing a wine or an aspect of grape-growing or winemaking, he wandered all the way around the table, poured a tiny bit of wine each glass, swirled it around, and dumped it out! He had asked us to smell the inside of our clean glasses before we started, and said that the glasses were actually too clean. This over-cleanliness can actually compromise the taste of a wine, so there should be something there before you start to pour and drink. His suggestion for cleaning wine glasses - wash by hand in hot water and dishwashing liquid, put them upside down on a rack to air dry, and put them away the same way. Even wiping the inside of a good wine glass can contribute to contaminating it for taste. Who knew?

Once we all had a bit of wine in our glasses - and he wasn't pouring more than about an ounce and ultimately part of that was dumped out too - the real business of tasting started:

Step 1: Tip the glass about 45 degrees and let some light from above shine through it. What do you see? In a white wine, the lighter colour will indicate a lighter textured wine that is probably very crisp tasting. It will also not have been cellared in oak barrels, because they impart a golden colour to the wine. For a red wine, the colour will be an indicator of the type of grape it is made from - some like Pinot Noir are quite light and almost see-through in colour, but the Shiraz and the Cabernet Sauvignon are quite dark.

Step 2: Swirl the wine in the glass and take a long, deep sniff. What do you notice from the aroma? What sensation do you get? Can you describe it? This is often another hint to the type of wine you are drinking as different varietals have different signature aromas. At our second tasting we actually got, on the back of our tasting notes sheet, the Wine Aromas wheel that is a reference for description. Very handy.

Step 3: Taste a bit. Rinse it around in your mouth for 10 seconds, then swallow. This primes your mouth for the wine. Taste a little more, rinse it around and swallow again. Do this one or two more times until the taste stays the same; it can change as your taste buds get more familiar with it. Then you can take another good sip and really start to analyze the wine.

So there you go. The wine tasting process. Actually, there is a fourth step. One of the things we had to do with each wine we tried was to give it a one-word descriptive label that would be THE clue that would unlock the details of the wine in our memories. That was the hardest part of the whole process. Words like 'nice' and 'smooth' weren't allowed, so we had a bit of fun with this aspect, but did eventually come up with some good words. It really made us think about all the sensations we got from each wine.

Then there were the wine pairings. Of course, the main pairing is Wine with Food. Who needs to be specific? But one thing Richard did point out was that it doesn't make sense to buy a wine because you like it, and then not know what food you want to serve it with. Unless, of course, you are buying a wine that you just want to drink with friends, or have at a particular time of year with seasonal dishes. So when shopping for wine, you need to know where you want to use it, and then determine exactly which wine you want to fit the bill.

Now we tried a number of wines at Tyrrell's, and in between each one, Richard went through the same process of rinsing the glasses out with a tiny bit of the new wine, not water, and not getting clean glasses. The only thing we cleaned was our palates, and that only between different types of wine.

At the end of the morning's tasting

Just about everything we learned during the morning's session was worth the price of admission! But Richard has been in the business for a long time and used to work with some of the larger wineries like Penfold's and Lindemann's before they were taken over by conglomerates. He doesn't have much good to say about them, and it is easy to see how the focus on the bottom line will affect the quality of the result in an industry that is so heavily dependent on weather in the short term and climate in the long run.

That brings us to the end of our lecture on Australian winemaking. The outlook for the industry here is fairly grim over the next 50 years or so. Rainfall is declining and temperatures are rising. At some point the rising temperatures will make it practically impossible to grow grapes in places like the Barossa and Hunter Valleys, so winemakers are now looking to establish vineyards in higher elevation areas to counteract this for some time at least. This leads us to our second stop at Hungerford Hills, after lunch at Muse Restaurant in the valley, since this is what they are trying to do.

The visitors' centre at Hungerford Hills

After being filled with new knowledge and information, and a little bit of wine (well, for one of us anyway) we headed back to Sydney. The 2-hour drive seemed longer on the way back, but most of us were nodding off a bit, anyway. Here is a map of the area of Hunter Valley that we visited, along with our general route and stops along the way.

Our route through the valley and
our stops

Rather than trying to go out for dinner, we started working on the blog and ordered from room service. No specific plans for tomorrow, but we'll have to see what happens...