Grampians and Pyrenees

We drove inland from the GORd to look for kangaroos and taste the wines in the mountainous area called the Grampians, famous for shiraz. The mountains are part of the southern Great Dividing range and have quite interesting formations. We hiked a bit in the national park -- there was a forest fire here a year ago and it was amazing to see how many blackened trees survived and had new leaves. Apparently, eucalyptus can sometimes regenerate after a fire.

It's pretty dry here -- the drought started 10 years ago in this area (compared to five yrs in Melbourne area) and has reduced wine volumes by about 50%. But what they do get is very concentrated!

Grampian wines
We visited Best's, still family owned, with an amazing nursery of old original vines from the 1860s: syrah, of course, but also chard, cab, pinot, dolcetto, and pinot meunier. Perhaps unique in the world, the vines are of interest in Europe because they predate phyloxera. We toured their hand carved cellars built in the 1860s. Best's wines are available in Alberta, but not Ontario. Pity!

Next door is a winery that looks like an oil refinery! Seppelts winery is huge with a forest of steel tanks sitting in the sun. Much of the juice for their wide variety of wines comes from the prolific Murray river area, the Riverland. Their local shiraz, however, is very good. Their 3 km cellars were carved out of "decomposed granite clay" by out-of-work gold miners in the 1860s and have barrel vaulted ceilings like in champagne.

Pyrenees
We drove to the Pyrenees area today -- it's a long way from anywhere! The mountains are really well named the Blue Pyrennes because of the haze in the air from eucalyptus trees -- same as the Blue Mountains near Sydney.

Dalwhinney wines were outstanding! They were just assembling the crushing equipment when we arrived to start picking tomorrow (March 2nd), although they admitted the crop would be very small this year because of the frost and hail in November compounding problems from the drought. Mother Nature knows how to pile on the worries!

Next door, Taltarni had already started to harvest their small quantities, but admitted that their properies in other areas were a life saver. Their very good sparkling includes grapes from Tasmania, and they are getting very good results for shiraz from a property in Heathcote's volcanic soils (closer to Melbourne).

Redbank's Sally Paddock is a vineyard in front of their authentic old tasting room -- it's also the name of their best wine, a blend including shiraz, cab sauv and cab franc. Sally's Hill is their regular label here from grapes grown on their non-irrigated property, not avail in Canada to my knowledge, and One Hundred Tree label includes wines from the Pyrenees area.