Trip 9 – A very special day

20 years today, that’s how long Jules and I have been married.

During this time, we’ve bought a house and raised two beautiful daughters, but most importantly we’ve had a lot fun and shared some great experiences.  Like most relationships, there has been the good, and the more challenging times, however I can honestly say that the good times far outweigh the bad, and we’ve grown stronger as a couple as the years have passed.  I am not one for public outpourings of emotion, but for the record, I will say this:

Jules, I love you today, like I loved you yesterday, and I’ll love you tomorrow like I loved you today. 

This won’t make sense to you lot, but Jules will know what it means and that’s all that matters.

To celebrate our 20 years, we’re off on a Barossa Daimler chauffeured wine tour, including lunch at Vintners and a visit to Maggie Beer’s shop.

Cheers for now!

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What a day!  Straight off the bat, let’s say that Barossa Daimler Tours are fantastic!  John (with Libby in the office) are great and we had a ball today.  John picked us up in (one of) his 1962 Daimlers and after a brief intro, we were off to sample the delights of the Barossa.  To say that John was knowledgeable and passionate about wine and the Barossa would be a vast understatement.  His enthusiasm and ability to pass on interesting facts was a highlight.  We started out at St Heletts winery where, unbeknownst to us, John was gauging our reaction to the wine sampling, from which he then planned the rest of our day (e.g. the trip isn’t a fixed plan, it’s completely customised to your wants and/or pallet). After finding, and buying, some new favourites at St Hellets we were off to Langmeil winery for some more, new favourites.  Langmeils have arguably the oldest grape vines in world with some of their vines dating back to 1843.  How can this be you ask, surely the Europeans and Mediterranean have older vines you say..  Well, a lot of the international wines were infected with a virus some years ago and had to be ripped out and replanted so whilst the yard/soil may be old, the vines growing in them are not necessarily so and as we’ve not had the same virus issues in Australia the vines in the Barossa as some of the oldest in the world.  From Langmeils it was out to Angaston for a nice lunch at Vintners, with another glass of wine, before heading out to S Smith & Sons, otherwise known and marketed as Yalumba.  Before our wine tasting we did a tour of their still working cooperage (where they make wine barrels), followed by another round of ten or so fantastic wines (and a few more purchases).  Last winery stop was Torbreck, who are currently renovating the original stone cottage, so whilst the wine tasting area wasn’t as nice as the others we’d been to, the wine more than made up for it.

One of the fantastic experiences of today was attending these wineries with John who is obviously VERY well known and respected throughout the Barossa as there were people waving and greeting him everywhere.  This extended into the wineries where his introduction got us up to an hour of exclusive time with the cellar staff, really allowing us to have a great chat to them about their wines and history, with the added benefit of sampling some top shelf ($250+/bottle) wines not on the tasting menu.

All in all, we must have easily sampled over 30 wines from the four wineries and whilst not every wine was to our pallet, there were certainly some crackers that we bought.  Some as ‘drink nows’ and a few others as ‘cellar and drink later’, we just have to get them back home to WA now..

I’d like to say we finished our 20th anniversary with a lovely meal at a restaurant but we were both too knackered so ended up cooking grilled cheese on toast before collapsing on the couch..  A good day none the less, made even better by sharing it with my wife of 20 years.