Booze cruise
chantal had 3 days off work, so we went to the hunter valley to do some wine tasting for a day. this turned out to be completely free, as she gets tours for nothing through her job, and i was supposed to pay 50 percent of the cost as her friend. but they forgot to charge us, so it was all on the house.
we had about 4 hours sleep before getting up at stupid oclock to get on the coach. having gotten quite drunk and played pool till 2am the night before , i was not in the best shape for this. the coach had some of the most uncomforatable seats ever conceived, and as i finally thought i might drift off, the coach driver started a monologue about sydney and how expensive it was etc etc, which went on for about an hour. this was over the PA system in the coach and there was no escaping it. luckily, at the first rest stop, there was free jungle juice, which is some kind of local port. chantal didnt like hers, so i of course helped her out as a gentleman should.
i immediately felt a lot better, decided that a cigarette was a good idea, which immediately made me feel like throwing up, so was back where i started. with the temperature climbing into the thirties at 10 am and feeling sick , getting back on the air con bus was a blessing, and the seats were forgiven their earlier harsh criticism. however, it was still impossible to get comfy, every time i dropped off to sleep, my head would fall to one side or the other, and id get woken up by the feeling that my neck had just snapped.
onward we went, on to the first winery. there was a tour for about an hour about how wine was made etc, which was reasonably interesting but i felt that it was merely in the way of what we had come to do, which was to drink expensive wine for free. its like going to a pig roast. you dont want to wander around a field being told how pigs are reared for an hour beforehand, what you want is a bacon sandwhich. immediately.
that reminds me ....bacon is another subject which i havent covered yet, but i will come back to that....
anyway, after the tour, lunch was served, had chosen a steak, which turned out to be quite good. the best thing was that there were 4 glasses of wine (not full unfortunately), 2 red and 2 white. they were lovely. after dinner, there was a dessert wine. after that, port was served, and after that there was madeira port.
so, we were out of the about 1pm and went on to the next winery.
which was 10 minutes away. no respite.
there was no messing about here. straight to a tasting table, and about 8 really nice wines.
i have discovered i really like a heavilly oaked chardonnay (full vanilla flavoured, must be french oak...) , and a nice full bodied shiraz, spicy and peppery. so now i can pretend to be all cultured and stuff. hoorah.
well, the punishment didnt end there. next stop was a wine shop, that also had free tasting. we worked our way from champagne to whites, to light reds to reds, then onto cream liquors. we drank so much free wine here it was starting to get embarrasing.
we bought a bottle of one of the the cream liquors, chantal likes to mix it with cream. its lovely but instant coronary material.
well, needless to stay we had to be nearly wheeled out of there onto the coach. slept most of the way back, the chairs didnt seem so uncomforatable.
