Wine regions around Adelaide

A few years ago we had spent a long weekend in Adelaide with a day trip to the Barossa Valley. Despite all the reports of previous travellers we had enjoyed the city a lot and hadn't found it boring as so many others had experienced it. There are a lot of good, interesting restaurants and we found a number of cool, special bars that we really enjoyed.

This time we therefore didn't even drive into Adelaide but found a really interesting route circumventing the city and getting the best out of the many wine regions South Australia has to offer. From Port Germein just a 1.5 hour drive we reached the Clare Valley. Definitely a smaller wine region but well organised with a "Riesling Trail" through the "valley" (Austrians would never call it a valley just because a river is running through a town ;-) ) which can be undertaken by foot or bicycle passing a many of the wineries (nearly as we know it from Austrian wine regions hiking through the vineyards from one Buschenschank to the next). A great way to explore the valley if you have a weekend or longer. From Adelaide the Clare Valley is a bit too far for a day trip but with an overnight stay on the weekend this is a great getaway spot. 

Coming into an Australian wine region we of course can recognise some of the big winery names that we had already enjoyed a bottle or more of during our time in Australia. Therefore our first stop was Knappstein Winery and Brewery. I remembered the boutique beer and also the wine turned out to be very good. We bought a bottle of wine and a 4 pack of beers for our trip. On we went for some more tastings in smaller wineries with a local tasting platter, yummie. The end of the Clare Valley made a trip to a big winery we already had lot of bottles of, Taylors. Architecturally not very outstanding (well if you like the 80ies then yes) but staff was great and I tasted so many wines that I was really tipsy afterwards. Marlene had to drive that day.

The next stop then was Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, just 30 minutes out of Adelaide and we practically had to drive through Adelaide to get there. Hahndorf was established by 52 German lutheran families who fled from Germany for their religious believes. They named the township after their captain Hahn. This town really feels like entering an old German town and made us giggle quite a lot. Nobody of the locals speaks German anymore, well, 175 years is a long period of time.. 

However, the bars and restaurants definitely offer a lot you expect in a German restaurant abroad. You can choose from so many German beers and we also enjoyed a Munich platter with Kaesekrainer, Bratwurst, Sauerkraut, Kaessler meat, etc. It was so much that especially Marlene is still recovering from it and can't see, smell or eat any sausages until now :-)

We then drove on to find a spot to stay. Preferably we stay on public camping grounds with toilet faciliies. Equipped with an app called "Camps Australia Wide" (the book version is Camps7, numbered consecutively) it is fairly easy to plan your trip. Unfortunately the camp site in a regional park we had picked was not open and so we had to go and ended in the McLaren Vale.

The McLaren vale is close to a magnificient coastline especially on such hot days.

The next day we then stocked up on supplies for our trip to Kangaroo island which started in the afternoon. Again we had to check out some of the wineries that we had known by name. Firstly we went to Rosemount wines which had a market on with lots of stalls which made it a great experience. It was important that everything was indoors as the heat had been impecable for the last two days, constantly over 40 degrees.

Then we visited D'Arenberg and Wirra Wirra, famous for their Churchblock wine which they had a big bottle of out on the car park.

To give you an idea of the tasting experience here is a picture of a "cellar door" where the wine tastings are happening, here at Wirra Wirra.