Adelaide Day 3 - Barossa Valley

After a day of rest, it was back onto the wine tour. This time, we went to South Australia's and probably Australia's most famous wine region, the Barossa Valley.

Being such a famous area, we tried to visit as many wineries as we could that day. We went to the following places.
Yalumba
Henschke
Penfold's
Maggie Beer's Farm House
Torbreck
Barossa Valley Estate
Rockford
Grant Burge
Jacob's Creek




Yalumba


Henschke


Penfold's


Maggie Beer's


An inquisitive peacock that walked right up to me.


Torbreck


Barossa Valley Estate


Rockford


Grant Burge


Jacob's Creek


The Barossa Valley wineries definitely are spectacular in terms of appearance. Probably the most spectacular that we saw all day was Yalumba. That huge ancient castle like building is just a beautiful sight.

The Henschke, Torbreck and Rockford cellars were all tiny but full of character, Rockford in particular. There were cobwebs in the Rockford cellar, such is the authenticity of the building's age.

Maggie Beer's Farm House was the most interesting with a very calming view of the pond. It was also interesting to walk around outside and look at the pheasants.

The larger cellar doors in Penfold's, Grant Burg and particularly Jacob's Creek were more commercial in feel. That didn't necessarily translate to a lesser experience, just that it didn't look as good.

In terms of wines, I would say that I really liked Penfold's, Torbreck and Grant Burge. You could try a lot of wines at those places and the staff were all very helpful in explaining things and making suggestions. We had a great talk with the lady (forgot to get her name) at Torbreck, who told us all about their wines and also about other wines in the region. She even suggested some other wineries that we should visit.

A Canadian guy we met in McLaren Vale was telling us how most of the wines in the Barossa region really aren't even from that region. I kept that in mind and asked at every winery where their grapes were from. It did turn out that they all used multi regional grapes from all over SA. This isn't to say that the Barossa wines are bad, far from it, but it doesn't truly represent the region if that's what you're after. There wasn't one winery that got their grapes exclusively from the Barossa region.

For lunch, we stopped at a place called The Branch in Nuriootpa. I got the Beef Burger, which was quite good. I like the chips with the aioli.


Dinner was at a Korean BBQ Buffet on Gouger Street. I was expecting the worse as buffets are so rarely good, but to my surprise, most of the meat there was actually fresh and tasted good. I would recommend going there.