Trip 9 – Good food, wine and friends!

A relatively unremarkable journey from Mt Remarkable down to Hahndorf saw us competing with Adelaide CBD traffic whilst towing the van, but we made it through unscathed.  Hahndorf (for the unknowing) is Australia’s oldest surviving German settlement, established in the 1830’s.  Most of the buildings in the main street are hangovers from a time long gone and the village has a touristy but quaint feel to it.  After setting up the van, Jules and I walked into town to explore the shops in the evening light before ordering some wine and pizzas at The Haus.  Good pizza’s but we tried to eat all of it and only succeeded in over-indulging and making ourselves feel crook.  At least we had the walk home to work some of the food down..

Sunday was Jules’s day.  Via pre-arrangement we first met up with Heather, her old Contiki groupy and housemate from the UK, and Jeff and Aimee for morning tea at the German Pastry Shop.  We then met up with more of Jules’ ex-Contiki mates, Anna, Shorty and Luisa for lunch and a pint at the German Arms (note the German theme going on in Hahndorf)?  Lots of laughter, storytelling and general piss-taking ensued for a good afternoon.

Monday morning had us performing a Willie Nelson, “on the road again”, this time out to Langhorne Creek for some wine sampling before turning north to Tanunda in the Barossa.  Like much of SA, Langhorne Creek is old.  There is some real history going on over here.  We dropped into the Bleasdale winery which was established in 1850 by the Potts family and has some of Australia’s oldest vines.  See pics below of the old wine press and oak barrels.  Every wine we tasted at Bleasdale was a cracker and after planning to only buy ‘one for the road’ we ended up with half a case and a mail order form..  Check them out, it’s good stuff.  From Langhorne Creek, we looped back up through Murray Bridge, where we stopped for morno’s, before tracking past Mannum and back up over the range, driving through some beautiful countryside, out to Tanunda, our destination for the next couple of days.

Lazy start to Tuesday, late breakfast whilst waiting for the wineries to open…  Actually we only did a couple of wineries today, Chateau Tanunda, Seppeltsfield and a favourite of ours from home, Kalleske.  Chateau and Seppelts both had some reasonable wines however we really enjoyed tasting the wine list at Kalleske and ended up ordering a case to be sent home.  They do a fantastic platter for two of local produce consisting of cheeses, dips, meats and fruit, great value at $20.  We also had to take a quick trip up to Angaston to try the vanilla slices, advertised in the local guides as the best in S.A.  The snot blocks were pretty good but we’ve a few to try before we’ll support the claim of best in S.A.