Australian Wine Country -

Actually, it is difficult to avoid wine country. Almost all of rural South Australia is wine country, quality wine country. Today we rented a car. Yikes! Steering wheel on the right; driving lane on the left is the standard. Scary . . . just one boo-boo and head-on collision!! One must have a driver or a rented car to visit the wine country so . . . hold nose and jump in! Stan is a great driver, thank goodness! I attempted to be the navigator. We had to remind ourselves, "Aussie Rules apply here"—stay left!

We explored the Barossa Valley, most famous as the home of Penfolds Barossa. The area looks so much like California around here with vast open golden fields of recently harvested wheat, barley, oats and lentils laid out on gentle rolling hills. Trees are sparse but make sharp contrast with their fan shaped green canopies. Almost all the trees are a variety of Eucalyptus or cedar. Today the scenery was shaded by smoke blown in from random brush fires from Victoria and from Kangaroo Island. Still the country side looked vast, golden and beautiful!

Yep, we stopped at Penfolds, but the tasting room was completely packed. Instead, we opted to visit a couple of small artisan wineries that import to the USA. We tasted and bought wines from Elderton Wines in the heart of Nuriootpa and from Lambert Estates in Tanunda. Wonderful places. We had so much fun! Besides the great wine, one of the highlights was meeting the owner of Lambert Estates and learning they were American transplants from Wisconsin by way of California who retired and relocated to Australia to own and operate a winery. What a leap! Can you imagine??? In my opinion, the best of our purchases today is a wine called Stanley Lambert Choc-a-Bloc, an Australian chocolate infused red dessert port. Ohhhh, boy, very nice!

Have I mentioned meat pies? Ooh my goodness! Australians love their baked goods. They prefer a meat pie to a burger and a roll to ice cream. After having a couple of meat pies, I think I do too! We had a steak pie on the ferry from Kangaroo Island last night because that's about all they had on the ferry. It just happened to come from one of the best bakeries in the area, and today we had another meat pie because we had tasted some wine, it was far past the time restaurants were open for lunch, and we needed to eat before we driving back to Adelaide. Fortunately, the Tanunda Bakery was in full swing. You know, at home, most bakeries closed by noon or soon thereafter - not here! It is just weird stopping at a bakery at 3 pm and finding it packed with people meeting friends for coffee and or a group of school girls having baked snacks before heading home.

Tomorrow, we say good-bye to Adelaide and start our 2-night way to Melbourne via more wine country and the Great Ocean Road.