A good deal more than Shiraz!

Friday:  I was left to myself in the morning as Christine, my host, had to go to an early optician's appointment.  I was picked up at 10 by Drew (see yesterday) for a drive out to the Southern Hills, where, as he put it, 'there are squillions of wineries;.  We visited no fewer than six, tasting wine at five of them and having lunch at one.

It was fascinating to me, as a wine drinker who's not - until now - been madly sold on Australian wine.  This is only a little because of the 'food miles' attached:  much more because most of what gets exported to the UK is made from the Shiraz grape, and moreover is very 'in your face', ultra full bodied wine with not a trace of subtlety.  I learned differently yesterday!   The Australians have been for a few years now experimenting with warmer-weather grape varieties, so some European familiars, like Tempranillo and Pinot Grigio, are being used increasingly, with great success.  The nicest of all the wines I tasted yesterday was a chenin blanc, crisp and fruity and just the thing for a warm summer evening out on the patio, with a few nibbles prior to dinner.  They make a good Cabernet Sauvignon, too, the wine I chose to accompany a delightful lunch of 'saltbush lamb' (the sheep apparently feed on saltbush, a local kind of vegetation, which is supposed to give them a distinctive flavour, though I couldn't have told you that it wasn't Welsh lamb from Sainsbury's!).  It was beautifully cooked, though, quite rare - something we don't do with lamb at home - and tender as can be.  Sorry, vegetarian Friends, but it really was good!

The wineries we visited were all quite small, and what they sell is basically individuality.  You won't find acres of supermarket shelves loaded with depressingly uniformly tasting bottles:  these wines vary from one year to the next as much as any, and the winemakers do some imaginative combinations of grapes.  (We saw one with no fewer than five different grape varieties, though Drew opined that this was a blend of the leftovers!)  The sad thing was that they weren't cheap, or even (in my book) medium price:  the first winery were all A$25 or more (£15 to you back home) a bottle.  Only at the D'Arenburg winery did we find a whole range at $11, though Drew said you can get perfectly drinkable wine for less than $8 if you know where to look.  So my total purchase was one bottle of riesling - very quaffable - for $11.

It was an enjoyable trip, though, but took rather longer than we'd really planned:  I wasn't home till 4.30 pm.  There was an event in the evening, for the local Quakers to meet the Anglicans in the Cathedral:  there's a close relationship because the Meeting House backs onto the Cathedral building, and Friends own a small part of the land on which the Cathedral is built!  But the meeting was at 6.00, which would have meant leaving at about 5.15 or so, and I was feeling quite tired and hot, as the day had become sunnier and sunnier.  So we opted out, and Christine and I had a pleasant supper of salmon and fruit, and chatted:  I tried her baby grand Bechstein while she was walking the dogs, and read my emails, and then had an early night.  No special plans for tomorrow, though possibly a visit to the National Wine Museum:  a relaxing day, I think!