*singing* Red, Red wiiiiine....

The alarm goes off.
It's 6am...
Why am I up?!?!

Oh, that's right.....WINE TOUR!!!

Today was a glorious adventure. (Read: this will be a very long post) Alex C had arranged for Kim, Aliza, and myself to go on a Wine and Wildlife tour up to Hunter Valley. They were impatient. Bad news was that I had to get up early and be at the Macas (McDonalds' nickname) at 7am. Normally this would have been awful but with the proper motivation, I was there 20min early.
We waited a bit to find the right bus (several other wine tours were also starting from there...including one most of the Alfreda house was going on). Bus driver was a really nice guy, more on him later. We picked up Alex over near U Syd along with other passengers and made our way up to Hunter Valley.
This trip was pretty cool because instead of just stopping at a gas station half way up to hunter valley, we stopped at another Wildlife part, except this one was more reptile based, at least it seemed that way from the entrance. Wildlife park began with getting a bag of food for the kangaroos and heading down to the koalas. This place was much bigger than the other place we went to, much more open space. The koala area had a lot of them, with one particular fenced in area for petting/taking pics with koalas (no holding, apparently that's illegal in NSW and not in Queensland). As we stood there, a koala in one of the trees starts climbing down RIGHT next to me while others were taking their pics. The caretaker guy comes over to coral her and take both of them over to the other cage to put the female away. While dealing with the female, the guy failed to notice the male went for the getaway and made for a tree outside the cages. The guy tried to get him, but really...the koalas just better at climbing. Then, the guy JUMPS on the tree and starts climbing up after the male (this is a really thin tree), but the male just went higher than the guy could possibly go. Pictures continued.
We moved from the koalas, to the birds, to the kangaroos taking pictures while taking turn feeding/petting them. Passed by dingos, monitors, wombats, baby kangaroos feeding from mothers pouches (I have a video), on to the spider's section. They had some big ass spiders. They also had a showing where they milked a spider for venom research (cool to me, don't care what you think), but it wasn't too eventful. We then wen to the Platypusary (greatest name ever), saw a platypus and left. We were running low on time. Pit stop in the bathroom, snapped a couple of pics on a run through (literally) of the snake/reptile exhibit, and back to the bus.

First Wine Tasting:
So we arrive at this little place called Savannah Winery and are directed into this small cabin looking place. I personally don't really know how we do this all the bus driver said was "dive right on in." So we get a list of what wines are available and someone eventually starts requesting which to try. We all naturally say we want to try it as well. We started with the whites and moved, eventually at the reds (a trend that would continue for the rest of the day). The girls were very much into the whites. There was one in particular that was this sparkling pink something, I forget the name, that was actually pretty good and right up their alley. None of the girls like the reds as much, although they tried them. They were scrambling for cheese and crackers (this was the only place to have them). I was loving most of them, some were a little off for me. The dessert wines/sweet wines were enjoyed by everyone. I love port...
At the end, it was time to buy whatever we wanted and get back to the bus. We were told by the driver that if we wanted to get decent wine for cheap this was the winery to do it because you could get a case of clean skin reds or whites for $60 ($5 a bottle) whereas individually they were $10. I tried to round up people to split a case, may of them were not interested. Eventually got two other girls and the driver to split it with me. Joy! Wine!

Wine Tasting #2:
We boarded the bus, and headed on to the next vineyard. This one was called Tulloch.
Here a few of our group headed off on the Wobbly Wine tour where they went on bikes through the vineyard. We went downstairs to where they had our wine tasting set up. This guy was much more informative than the first. He tried to explain more about the valley, soil types, types of wines, how they were made, etc. He also tried to throw in a few anecdotes. We went through the normal list of wines. After the tasting, they invited us to go upstairs and try a few more of whatever else we wanted. The girls tried a few more whites and found one they like and got them. We took a few pictures with the vineyards in the background and went for lunch!

Food!:
Driver man set up reservations at a place called Oscars. Lots of options but I got this burger known as "the works". Basically as Australian as burgers go. Picture included. Let me preface by saying it was actually really good. Ingredients: burger, lettuce, tomato, beet root, egg, pineapple, bbq sauce, and some sort of bacon/ham. Strange, yes...but good. Probably not the most healthy thing in the world, but whatever.
We finished a little early and goofed off in the park taking a few more pictures.



Wine Tasting #3:
This place (I forget the name) was a little more laid back. The guy who served us just kinda served one and then walked away for a while letting us, I guess, taste at our own leisure. This was a much larger wine company with vineyards all over the place (I think they may have said even all over the world). The one thing they had that was interesting was "Early Harvest" wine (in a white and a Rose). Basically it's a wine that they pick the grapes early so they have less sugar. Less sugar means less alcohol and less calories so it's almost a "diet" wine of sorts. Not my type of wine though. This place did have some dipping sorts of stuff such as olive oil or vinaigrettes with bread which was nice for kinda taking that "edge" off from all the wine. By this winery, the girls has basically stopped tasting the reds. They just walked away, found the restroom and perused through the shop part.

Wine Tasting #3.5/Olive Store:
The last place wasn't quite ready for us yet so we had a stop over. There were two places at the stop we went to. One was an olive/olive oil store. They had lots of samples set up of dipping sauces/oils/others as well as some olives to try. Very good, tried the majority, but a little too expensive, so I didn't get anything. We still had a few more minutes, so we headed to the other building where we had a few more wines to try. A few red and a few sweeter wines. Me and this german guy that I kinda hung out with on the side went in and basically just asked for something "different." He gave us a spanish wine as well as a few others to try. Some were very "interesting", not really sure what made them like that, nor did I really dislike or like them. But we had to hurry back to the bus and basically ditch the guy mid wine tastings to get to our next one.

Wine Tasting #4: This one was pretty cool. This one was call the _____ Winery. We basically walked up to the bar and the man, who was very cool and Irish, got us all on the bar and basically flew right into it. He was the opposite of the last guy. Right as we finished one wine he'd bring on the next. And the next, and the next, and as you can see from the picture...we had a lot of different wines. Here was where most people bought some wine. Alex bought a really good white wine that she and the rest of us liked. I decided to get a small bottle of port to enjoy some special evening when the evening calls for it.

Cheese Shop:
The last stop on our tour was a cheese shop. In fact, it was called "The Smelly Cheese shop" as you can see from the sign. Wasn't really sure how this place worked, but it was acutally pretty similar. You just went up and said "can I try some of that." So we tried some blue, some parmasean, some others and a triple creamed brie that was REALLY good, but I still kinda like the single creamed better, dunno why. We saw some of the other wine tour groups and joined up with the wobbly wine tour guys. Not too long of a stop, so we just got back on our way round 4:30 in the afternoon.

So we got back to Coogee round 7 something when it was dark. I went back, took my wine and put it up for later consumption. The rest of the guys gotten back from the blue mountains at this point so we just exchanged a few stories from the weekend.

Food?
Sleep
(to be edited later with rest of night and some videos)