Day 16 Windahl in wine valley

Our name Windahl literally means wine valley. So today the Windahl went touring the wine valley. It is actually much better in Swedish: Windahl i vindal. It was a fantastic tour. We started with Peter Lehmann wines, about 20 minutes drive from our airbnb. There we tasted sparkling red wine, among other wines. Sparkling red is apparently a specialty here, and it was interesting. Maybe not the best of sparkling wines, but good enough. Alice tried an aged port-type that was a specialty of Peter Lehmann, and this was really a good one, and since we both liked it a lot we bought a bottle. This was also a wine they did not produce any more and they only had a crate or so left so we bought one of the last bottles. Outside the house they had like a park with many big trees, and there were hundreds of cockatoos that flew around there, and also made quite a lot of noice.

Next stop was for lunch and Åsa had since long suggested Maggie Beer's farm for this. Maggie Beer is a renown Australian chef, she has for example started restaurants, hosted TV-shows and appeared on MasterChef Australia. She has also started this restaurant and shop in Barossa Valley, where it is possible to book cooking classes, eat and shop. The products in the shop is produced on the estate, we bought for example apple cider and passionfruit curd, and many of us had pizza for lunch. The pizzas were cooked in an oven outside the restaurant and tasted yummy! Alice and I also tried their ice cream from the shop, and that was delicious too. Since I was driving today I also got to try one of the interesting soft drinks based on grape juices that they had on the menu. As a bonus the small pond next to the place had a big number of cute turtles that we looked at.

Waiting for tasting

Peter Lehmann Wines

Lennart and Christina at Peter Lehmann

Tasting at Peter Lehmann

Maggie Beer's farmhouse

Lunch, pizza Three cheese

Looking at turtles

After lunch we drove through a huge alley of palm-trees, and stopped at a viewing point were we saw large fields of wine and had a grand view of the valley. Here we also took some photos of the Windahls in the vine valley, Windahl i vindalen. (Maybe this was even one of the purposes of the whole journey?;) We then continued to the vineyard Chateau Tanunda. This wine estate was established in 1890, and their main building is built to resemble a French chateau. It seemed to be a rather large establishment, but here they had the tastings among wine-barrels and family cellars and that really gave a feeling of "being on a vineyard". Alice and I focused on semi-sweet and sweet wines this time, and picked the sparkling red to buy. This was said to go well with Christmas turkey and cranberry sauce, so perhaps we'll save it for next Christmas. And in case you wonder, yes it is possible to taste wine when driving, if only you spit out which I did today.

Windahl i vindal/Windahl in wine valley

Extended Windahl family in wine valley

At Chateau Tanunda

Big barrel

Barrels

Markus and Anneli

Chateau Tanunda

Before heading back "home" we decided to have a different kind of Barossa tasting; beer. There is a micro brewery called Barossa Valley Brewing, and they had a tasting with 6 different kinds of craft beer. (And here I only sipped two of them since I find it harder to spit beer when tasting). The most interesting one seemed to be one called I Can´t Believe it's not bacon, a very dark ale made from smoked malt. It really had a scent of bacon and tasted very smokey. Some of us went to shop, some stayed drinking beer and then we got back to the house to have a bath in the bubble pool. We cooked dinner, Anneli and Markus came over and we had a really nice time together around the table. I finished the day out in the garden, as we actually did yesterday to. The night skies have been clear the  last days and it is possible to see the southern cross from our backyard. Could not be a better last night in Barossa Valley.

Mikael tasting beer