Adelaide, Australia’s self-styled wine capital, is more than lucky when it comes to ready access, virtually on its doorstep, to some of the world’s greatest drops and some of its best food.
Before you head out of the city, though, don’t forget to visit the Adelaide Central Markets, a fine semi-permanent collection of food outlets that’s very European in style and should be the envy of all major Australian cities.
Two of the states’ premier wine regions — the Southern Vales, home of some of our biggest and fullest-flavoured reds, and the loftier Adelaide Hills, which generally produce more elegant wines, especially dry whites made from chardonnay and sauvignon blanc, virtually cascade into the city’s suburbs.
Access to both is easy through public transport, but if you’re heading south to the Vales I’d seriously suggest booking an all-day adventure with Diva Tours, owned by Greg Linton, a McLaren Vale local who runs the company in partnership with his wife Dea.
Using one of his seven-seat Mercedes people movers, he does the tour comfortably and in sheer class, providing a thought-provoking commentary that probes just enough to discover the sort of places customers are interested in getting to.
It’s a genuinely first-class and personal service that concentrates on providing unique experiences.
If you have time, relatively deep pockets if you’re having lunch, and your own transport, make a beeline for McLaren Vale’s latest creation, the Rubik’s Cube wonder of D’Arenberg’s new restaurant and tasting room.
If you’re going to head south-east to the Adelaide Hills, you can catch a bus up the steep incline to Hahndorf.
The town itself is a bit of a lederhosen caricature but it does provide access to some fine, richly flavoured German-style food and some top-notch wineries.
The Barossa Valley, about an hour north-east of Adelaide, is a very special place to get lost in, especially if you visit the historic cellars of Seppeltsfield, right in the heart of the valley.
Visitors are surrounded by casks of port from every vintage since 1878, when Benno Seppelt, eldest son of Silesian-born Seppeltsfield founder Joseph, laid down a barrel of his best to commemorate the opening of the family’s new cellar. There are European wineries with older wines than this, but nowhere is there a collection that can match the Seppeltsfield continuum.
I found the cask of 1949, my birth year, and was rewarded with a taste. The wine is a deep golden tawny colour and sticks to the side of the glass. Attempting to describe such an elixir in terms of other flavours is simply doing it an injustice. Let’s just say that it’s complex, multi-layered and absolutely delicious.
Each year, Seppeltsfield bottles and releases a small quantity of 100-year-old port. You can buy this wine at the cellar door. The price of $1000 or so for 375ml is actually quite a bargain, especially when you consider that the loss through evaporation — quaintly deemed the angels’ share — from a barrel over a hundred years is something like 80 per cent. Lucky angels!
Tasting these wines — and several other luscious aged gems — is just part of the Seppeltsfield Centenary Tour ($125), which also includes exploring the historic buildings that hold Australia’s greatest trove of old, rare fortified wines.
If you can arrange your Barossa visit for a Saturday morning then all the better. A great place to appreciate the strength of the district’s food culture is the Barossa Farmers Market, held weekly in Vintners Sheds on the outskirts of Angaston.
It’s a lively, friendly place where bakers, cheesemongers, smallgoods manufacturers, butchers, olive growers, breeders of game birds, orchardists, gardeners and purveyors of various condiments trade cheek by jowl and compete with each other in spruiking the invaluable role of the Barossa as one of Australia’s great premium food bowls.
A little further afield to the north, but at about 120 minutes from Adelaide still day-tripping distance, is the Clare Valley, surely one of Australia’s — and indeed the world’s —most beautiful grape-growing regions.
It is one of the spiritual homes of Australian riesling, so do taste some of these. They have the longevity to cellar for decades, especially in the era of screwcap closures. Also seek out shiraz and cabernet sauvignon reds, especially when the latter is blended with malbec.
And stop at Auburn, the southern gateway to the Clare Valley, and best known as the birthplace of that great poet and storyteller CJ Dennis. The Auburn Hotel, where his father was publican and he was born, was demolished in 1969 but stop at the historic Rising Sun Hotel, which has stables dating to the 1850s, and drink to Dennis’s Doreen.
Also, take a stroll through Mintaro, a town that just oozes historic buildings and dry-stone fences. It also offers a good selection of really quaint colonial-style accommodation and some fascinating stores.
Wander through historic Sevenhill Cellars, which date from 1851. It was the first winery in the Clare Valley, initially established by the Jesuits to produce sacramental wine. Just seven Jesuit brothers have been winemakers in that time and the place simply reeks history and character.
Cycle or walk at least some of the Riesling Trail, a 33-kilometre path that runs basically the length of the Clare Valley, between the towns of Auburn and Clare. The use of the old railway line guarantees that rises are gentle. There’s plenty of history, nature and wine sampling on the way. Several places offer bike hire for this essential Clare Valley experience.
Finally in the Clare, be amazed by unheralded historic rural ruins and grand Eucalypts. Decaying old stone buildings are a feature of rural South Australia, but nowhere more so than in the Clare Valley. Get off the main road, especially around the village of Watervale, and the district also features some of Australia’s finest Eucalypts.
