Time For Some Wine, and Other Expensive Booze

Since we had to cancel our trip to Queensland, on the recommendations of our friends here we changed our plans to head to the island of Tasmania.  However, Tassie is an extremely popular place to go in the summer and all the hotels in Hobart, its capital, were booked up for the weekend.  Thus we had a few more days to spend in Sydney before leaving, and though I could have easily spent every day on Bondi surfing we decided to give Mellissa a break from us.  So we headed up to the wine region of Hunter Valley to get our drink on for a couple of days.

Though I am partial to New World wines I never have been a huge fan of either Semillon or Shiraz, two varietals Australia is well known for.  The Hunter Valley region, not as famous as Australia’s Barossa region on the worldwide stage, is especially famous for its Semillon and Shiraz.  To be honest even though they’re not my favourite grapes I still love drinking wine in wine country.  So we drove the 90 mins it took to get there and started to taste the moment we arrived.  The first winery we passed by actually had a bunch of wild Kangaroos hopping around in its vineyard, sweet.  The lady at our guesthouse recommended some small wineries to us so we started with those to get our tastebuds wet.  We eventually moved on to the larger, more picturesque wineries to soak in some views and take some shots (pictures).  Some of the wineries were massive and promoted concerts as well on their grounds.  For example, INXS was playing at one winery sometime in the near future while Neil Diamond was playing at another.  I wouldn’t have minded watching INXS (I have no idea who their lead singer is now though I did have the KICK tape when I was a kid and I used to love ‘Never Tear Us Apart’.  My air guitar always came out after the silent pauses in that song.  And the saxophone solo was pretty sweet too, they should bring the saxophone back.  Sorry, I digress.) but sadly Di didn’t really know any of their songs.  Even more sad than that, she knew who Neil Diamond was.  And what’s even more sad then that?  She’s a huge fan of the song ‘Sweet Caroline’ because of the version sung in Glee.  But again, I digress.  Anyways, we had our first multicourse fine dining meal in Australia at a top restaurant here as well.  All in all, the wine was decent and the food was good.  However, the last wine region we visited on our trip was around the South African towns of Franschhoek and Stellenbosch.  In comparison I would have to say that South Africa’s wine valley was superior in every aspect.  Our meals there blew us away, the wine was delicious and their valley was stunningly beautiful.  Our friends here concur that Hunter Valley is not Australia’s best, so hopefully in Tasmania we can check out some wine as well.  I do sound like a snob here though; Hunter Valley still really is a nice place (just look at the above picture) and a short drive from Sydney, so recommended if you have some extra time like we did.

When we returned to Sydney Mellissa had a night planned for us with a few of her friends.  She made a reservation at a small seafood restaurant called Fish Face.  It was a neighbourhood joint with an open kitchen that held about 20 guests and served really tasty seafood from a small menu.  It, like most joints in Sydney, allowed BYO which meant you could bring your own wine to polish.  I really wish Vancouver allowed more of that.  After a great dinner we walked up the street to Eau de Vie, supposedly the spot with the best cocktails in the city.  Though I will vouch that the cocktails were the best I’ve had all year they were 25 dollars a pop!  Yes, 25 dollars, that is damn expensive for a mixed drink.  The vibe of the place was pretty cool, the bartenders looked very old school bartenderish (shirt, tie, tight vest, etc), the roof was low, the room was dark, and the varieties of liquor available were impressive to say the least.  Though I couldn’t recognize almost any of the bottles, the labels looked antique (which is cool, I guess) and the drinks were really good.  Each drink did take very a long time for them to make, which pretty much meant it took 30 minutes just to get your order in if you had 2 people ahead of you in line.  I had a couple concoctions made with ginger beer which were awesome.  All in all, it was a great (but expensive) night out.

Now we’re in Tasmania, ready to check out a different scene.  At our hotel in Hobart we just watched an episode of Glee.  I guess I should admit that I too, sadly, have become a Glee fan.  Sigh, that’s embarrassing.