Hunter Valley: A wine tasting tour

Photo was a little too zoomed-in but I didn't go too near in fear that I could've scare the kangaroo, which may lead to the kangaroo hopped away, or gave me a good kick. Anyway, the photo was taken at a winery in Hunter Valley.

Hunter Valley is about a two-hour drive north of Sydney, making it a popular day trip from Sydney. It is also Australia's oldest wine region, so we did a wine tour.

We signed up for a tour departing from Sydney which included visits to 4 different wineries, Kiss of Fire outlet for some liqueur tastings and Hunter Valley Chocolate Shop at the end of the day. Cost of the tour was $120 per person and we opted for the lunch option and paid additional $25 per person.

On the way there, we stopped at Oliver's Real Food for a toilet and self-funded breakfast break. Then we continued on our way to the first winery stop.


Ridgeview

We were told that the owner lives in Sydney and also works as a dentist (if I remember correctly), which we went, "wow!". Here are the wines we were served and my friend ended up buying the the 2015 "sweet tooth" which is sweet but good. Out in the vineyard looked beautiful but as we were there in early August, there were a little bare.

All she needed to do was to pay and give her name to the driver/guide. Our driver/guide would take the wine she bought and put it in a box along with the rest of the purchases by the rest of the tour members and carried it to the coach. Yup - they made purchasing very easy. Haha.

Macquariedale Organic Wines

Yup, wines can be organic too. Macquariedale Organic Wines was the first certified organic and biodynamic vineyard in the Hunter Valley. Unfortunately, my friends and I didn't quite enjoy the organic wines but many of our tour mates did considering the purchases made.

Hermitage Road Cellars
This was our third stop. Wines were served with some cheese pairing here, which is suitable timing because I was getting hungry by this time.

After this, it was lunch time! We opted in for lunch, along with another 4 other tour mates. We were served 8 pizzas and 4 salads between the 7 of us. There 4 types of pizzas and 2 different salads, plus wine of course.

From left: salmon, chicken, meat lovers and vege 

There were plenty of leftovers to take away. Then we were off to our last winery stop.


McGuigan Wines

This session was really enjoyable. The staff who was assigned to our group was entertaining as well as informative. The other friend made a purchase here. By this stop, I was almost at my threshold of alcohol.

Kiss of Fire

We were done with wineries but we had another alcohol stop - Kiss of Fire that sells liqueurs. There were liqueurs with different flavours including chilli which did have some kick to it! One of the flavours I enjoyed was the butter scotch liqueurs.

Then we went across to have some chocolates before returning to Sydney.


Hunter Valley Chocolate Factory

We were each given 4 pieces of chocolate and told to start with the chilli chocolate first, I think. I seem to recall that there are some with dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate combination, which I didn't realise when I picked it up from the tray. This was also the first time I tried ruby chocolate.

I had a very good sleep on our way back to Sydney courtesy to the alcohol intake. Haha.


Side note: Less than 2 weeks to finally a day of public holiday... though I need to work..