The first vineyard in the Clare Valley was planted in the late 1800's by a collection of Jesuit Monks who built the truly wonderful St Aloysius Church at Sevenhill, in what would have been the middle of a fairly deserted and pristine valley back in those days. The tradition of growing grapes for what was initially sacramental wine only, has flourished in the valley and surrounding area and has resulted in world class Reisling particuarly. There is a fantastic bike trail that runs for 35Km along the now defunct railway but unfortunately, the boys were not up for an extended tour of winery by bike (can't imagine why!) We did have a gorgeous day though and spent half of it at Horrocks, Seven Hills and Annies Lane Wineries and the other half at a hedge maze in Mintaro which the boys enjoyed. (we'd actually been promising them a maze visit ever since they saw one in our first week in Tasmania. Nothing like delayed gratification!)
The wine at Horrocks was good, but the cakes in the cafe were superlative- scones as light as clouds, sticky fig and date cake with caramelised toffee dizzle and ammaretto and coffee syrup...Oh, my goodness! Completely delicious.
Our Pick of the wines, however ,was a rose and a 2009 shiraz at Annies and then a Blue Cutting Shiraz the next day at O'Leary Walker wines. Having bought a case here, we vowed not to buy any more, but we were sadly unmanned by the sparkling shiraz and Port at Knappsteins in Clare itself. Ah well, we'll need a bit of wine to see us through to Margarets. Weather has been fab, lots of blue sky and sun, still cold though ranging from 4 to 15.