Nuriootpa SA Barossa Valley wineries Jacobs Creek Chateau Tanunda Maggie Beer City of Adelaide Cutty Sark Clipper Ship
Today was Barossa Valley Day. The centre of the wine industry here is Nuriootpa and we drove up there along a brand new freeway though miles and miles of verdant rolling countryside. They seem to grow just about anything here: tomatoes, fruit trees, vegetables. They also have these enormous glass houses that seam to spread out over the land for acres on end. The vineyards start abruptly though, it's as if some one drew a line in the dirt and said 'veggies here, vines here'. Nuriootpa has expanded somewhat since our last visit some 12 years ago. We found the info centre down in Tanunda, then went for our first wine tasting at Jacobs Creek Winery, also a revisit after 12 years. This s a very modern visitors centre, there's no pretence of being a 'cellar door', and it's so commercialised, sterile and unfriendly it borders on being 'orrible. We had a coffee in the cafe while waiting for the two tours to leave the bar area before fronting up ourselves. We w...