Swan Valley Wine Tour

Friday, October 31st

Happy Halloween!  Our master plan to wear our little miss t-shirts didn't work so well.  I wore my little miss wise, but the other girls didn't wear theirs.  Steph's was smelly from the run yesterday and Bernice would only wear it with shorts...and she was wearing a dress.  We ate our Kellogg's breakfast with strawberries and mango.  A good power start for the morning.

At 10:30am we hopped on our bus tour for our Swan Valley wine tour.  We decided to be well behaved and not just drink every taster.  If we don't like it, we dumped it.  No need to get super wasted on bad wines.  Our Swan Valley wine tour includes 5 wineries, 1 microbrewery, a nougat and chocolate factory, and a cheese and olives tasting.  Here's a quick documentary of the day's events:

11:15am - waters edge winery
Wagtail sparkling wine (AUD18) - blah
Turnstone reisling 07 (AUD19) - blah, not sweet
Sandpiper sauvignon blanc 07 (AUD18) - blah
Classic white 07 (AUD17) - ok
Chenin blanc 07 (AUD17) - pretty decent
Rose 07 (AUD17) - mixed review
Merlot cabernet 05 - 15% cab rest merlot - blah
Cabernet merlot - more merlot than cab - better
Shiraz - surprisingly it was fine to me.  I usually don't like shiraz.
Port - yummy to me

12:03pm - Garbin estate wines
Won the bronze medal award.  Family own winery, garden opened for over 50 years.  A boutique winery.

Unwooded wine first (made in steel barrels)
Chardonnay (AUD16) - we like
Chenin (AUD17) - we like
Verdelho (AUD17) - too sweet for steph, but bernice and I like it
Sauvignon blanc semillon (AUD19) - a mixed grape.  The sauvignon grape was from Margaret river - we heart.

Then premium reds:
Cabernet merlot - yes, good
Shiraz (AUD15) - steph and bernice liked it
Late picked verdelho (AUD15) - really nice sweet wine

1:00pm - Jane Brook
We tried their plain jane sparkling wine. It's made the same way they make champagne.  The sparkling wine was nice.  We also got to see a bottle with 23k gold bits in it that melts on your tongue.  Sort of like goldschlager liquor but they use only 14k.

At Jane Brook we had lunch accompanied by a full glass of plain jane sparkling wine.  The lunch was delicious.  A huge salad plate, with cold cuts, cheese and cantaloupes.  Very nice.  Steph and I shared a platter, and we were the only one of our group of 25 that finished the whole platter.  Pigs huh?  We were hungry!

2:05a pm - mondo nougat - world of nougat
Tried the crunchy nougat - really crunchy, and the pistachio/almond nougat...I liked that one.  I heart pistachios

2:25pm Jarrah Ridge wines
Smoked cheddar - very nice...yummy
Cheddar - very nice
Rosemary olives - yummm
Chocolate with pinot noir wine was really good.  So yummy
Chocolate covered espresso beans - also yum; always reminds me of maui

Classic white 06 (AUD12) - ok
Chardonnay 07 (AUD15). - fruity and good
Verdelho 07 (AUD15) - ok
Chenin blanc 08 (AUD12) - won two gold medals for it; I think I'm going to switch from reisling to chenin blanc from now on ;-)

Reserve shiraz 06 (AUD26) - steph and bernice like it.  Still trying to ease into the shiraz
Reserve shiraz/viognier (AUD26) - mixed grapes; softer on the tannins - good for me, not as good for steph
Port (AUD26) - not too sweet.  Very nice with chocolate coffee beans.

3:05pm - Edgecombe Brothers
Jam - tasted like normal jam

Sparkling chardonnay (AUD19.5) - nice and light
Semillion 08 (AUD16.5) - nice light.  Ohhh summer time
Chenin blanc late harvest 2008 (AUD17) - so nice.  Definitely like this over reisling now.
Shiraz 2007 (AUD18.5) - it was nice too
Muscat - dessert wine that's 23% alcohol.  Very nice with vanilla ice cream and the grape grown at the winery.  Yummy in my tummy...but you need to like sweets.

3:50pm - Elmar's in the valley
A beer brewery.

Steph and I tried the wheat and bernice the pilsner like beers.  They were ok.  The wheat was a bit cloudy...not that crispy.

4:35pm - Margaret River chocolate factory
Very famous chocolate place in Western Australia.  We had chocolate tastings. They are a bit of a cheat since they purchase the chocolate from Belgium and form it into truffles, bars and what not.  By this point we were all very stuffed.

We all snoozed on the bus ride back.  I guess that's the effect of wine.  We got dropped off at London Court, which is a very cute shopping street.  It reminded me of the old time shopping roads in disney world epcot or florence.  We then got on the train to head back to Subiaco to get ready for dinner.

Celina came with us to dinner at Lederville, a train stop from Subiaco. We met two of Bernice's friends, Sean and Savid at Siene.  The place was byo and Celina was all prepared with 4 bottles of wine.  Unfortunately we were all pretty wined out, so we didn't finish any of the bottles.  The two we opened were really good.  Steph, Bernice and her friends and I stuck to traditional pasta, which was delicious.  Celina got the Priscilla pizza, which as expected was delicious also.  Anything Priscilla is great!  We also took some hilarious pictures at the restaurant.  Dave showed us the korean heart pose, so you can only imagined how ridiculous we looked posing for many many photos in heart shapes.

Afterwards, we went to a coffee shop for some more chatting.  We just plopped ourselves down and didn't order anything.  They didn't seemed to be bothered by no purchases, so we didn't care and continued chatting.  It was good fun.  Bernice's friends were jokesters.

At around 11pm, Celina drove us around Northbridge to check it out.  Northbridge is a backpacker area, where one street is all clubs and the other is chinese bars (ie. Karaoke).  It was pretty pumping at night, but we were too tired to drink...and we had to pack and get up early to go to Rottnest island the next day.

I dozed off on the way back to Subiaco.  I was so tired it was not even funny.  Back at Celina's place we packed and showered so that the next morning wake up at 5:40am to leave at 6:15am won't be so dreadful.  We had to start early to go to Rottness island because we had to leave for the airport at 4:30pm the next evening to go to melbourne.  So excited to see natasha!