Wine-tasting and visiting vineyard cellar doorways is a number of enjoyable. But what if you wish to dig a bit deeper and discover out extra concerning the trade usually and the wines and the vineyard particularly. Here are three Hunter Valley wine-tasting experiences that offer you a lot greater than a sip.
We’ve all stood on the counter of a vineyard’s cellar door, coveting the little samples we’re poured, eyeing the spittoon prefer it’s about to grab our wine away.
We’ve all listened to the winemaker discuss us via the wines we’re tasting.
Sometimes it’s an eloquent tapestry of a story, typically there’s a little bit of banter. Other occasions—on busy days—it’s clear the cellar hand is uninterested in repeating themselves, and you’re feeling dangerous about asking one other query.
These are all the time useful experiences, however they will by no means actually go into that a lot element. You’re on a time schedule as a lot because the staffie is who’s pouring your wines.
More and extra wineries are realising we punters need extra than simply the regulation tasting expertise.
They’re creating every kind of how to indicate clients their story in additional element.
These three wineries are nice examples of how one can dig a bit deeper and study a lot extra concerning the fascinating strategy of wine-making.
1 hour – $25pp as much as 6 pax
Hunter Through The Ages is a vertical tasting, which implies you’re tasting the identical varietal from the identical winery however from completely different vintages.
At a fantastically laid desk amongst the barrels of the intimate Members’ Lounge, you’ll discover rows of glasses arrange ready for you.
For us, the superb Steve, who’s been with McGuigan for a few years and is aware of the wine in and out, takes us via the expertise.
Steve leads us via the 2 forms of wine the Hunter and McGuigan are recognized for: Semillon and Shiraz.
We’re proven how McGuigan’s award-winning Bin 9000 Semillon modifications within the bottle through the years to grow to be such a unique creature to its youthful self.
Moving on to the Personal Reserve Shiraz, we discover the modifications on this nice instance of medium-bodied Hunter Shiraz over time as effectively.
While we calm down with the wines and a cheese plate from close by Hunter Valley Cheese Factory, Steve takes us via among the historical past of the vineyard and the completely different terroir of its vineyards.
He’s additionally open to any questions, and it’s this transparency that we’re seeing with increasingly wineries now, actually letting clients in.
90mins – $80pp
The final behind-the-scenes expertise, Grape, Garden and Graze takes you to among the less-visited components of this impressively environmental vineyard.
First a tour of the kitchen backyard, the place a lot of the components utilized in Margan’s hatted restaurant come from.
Then you’re taken via to the vineyards and olive groves to see how the grapes are grown, harvested and became wine. You have a sneak preview tasting of yet-to-be-released vintages from the tanks and barrels of the vineyard’s interior workings.
Finally, you get to calm down within the stunning grounds of the Margan cellar door to get pleasure from a cheese and charcuterie board with a glass of your favorite wine from their menu.
And though we haven’t performed this expertise particularly, we had been at Margan throughout the Hunter Valley Wine and Food Festival, the place we did one thing comparable.
Here’s a brief video of what we did there.
90mins – $90pp as much as 8pax
The Scarborough household has all the time performed issues barely completely different to everybody else. Their common tastings are a lot extra private and thought-out than any others we’ve had.
But the Keepers of the Flame is de facto a rare expertise.
Not solely are you guided via the household’s new ultra-premium Chardonnay vary—Keepers of the Flame—in a vertical tasting, you get to discover past the cellar door into the vineyards.
And not solely that, you’re accompanied the entire time by both Jerome—the pinnacle winemaker and second-generation Scarborough, Liz Riley—award-winning viticulturist—or the cellar door’s supervisor and wine skilled.
Jerome and his sister the exceptional Sally Scarborough take us spherical each the Cottage Vineyard and Gillard’s Road Vineyard, sharing every little thing from soil sorts to how they handle pests, the rootstocks of vines and even how the vineyard recycles a lot of its waste to fertilise the land.
It’s such an interesting expertise, and we study extra about wine on this brief house of time than we thought attainable.
The Hunter Valley has some extraordinary wine experiences up its sleeves, with wineries actually tapping into our want to take our wine information additional but additionally to raise the curtain and see how issues work.
There’s nothing like seeing behind the scenes proper?
And for industries like wine-making, it not solely lets us as customers perceive extra, it makes us really feel much more related to the wine we’re ingesting.
