The Barossa Valley

A highlight of our time in Adelaide was a day trip to the Barossa Valley, one of Australia's premier wine regions. After driving ourselves through the Marlborough in New Zealand, we thought that it would be more fun to ride along on a guided tour this time. It was a good call!

This grapevine  at Langmeil is said to be the oldest Shiraz grapevine in the world

We visited four wineries and three tied as our favorites: Peter Lehmann, Langmeil, and Murray Street. The Barossa is renowned for its Shiraz as well as its fortified wines. We found that we really liked some of the Rieslings too. We also found something that we had never seen before -- sparkling Shiraz! We had a taste at both the Peter Lehmann and Langmeil wineries. Red champagne is definitely worth a try!

Langmeil was especially cool because it is home to several rows of 168 year old vines, said to be the oldest Shiraz grapes in the world. Check out the picture above. They didn't offer a taste of the wine from those grapes but did offer a 20 year old Tawny instead. We left happy!

-David

Murray Street Vineyards

Chateau Yaldara

Update: I totally forgot to mention our visit to the Whispering Wall! It is a big curved dam in the Barossa that has really amazing acoustics similar to Statutory Hall at the U.S. Capital. Standing in the right spots, Sara and I could talk to each other in normal voices from several hundred feet away. It was very cool!