Our Christmas tradition for the last few years has been to share a bottle of wine and some nice cheeses.
This year we had to forego our usual tradition, sharing lovely meals with both of our families. In leu of our usual plans, Chan arranged for us to spend a day up in the hunter visiting some wineries and cheese shop.
We hopped on a bus from Central along with a few others and were driven up to Cessnock by our friendly driver Shane. We stopped of at the first winery and tried a few nice (and a few not as nice) glasses before heading off to the second winery. We were met at the Iron Gate Estate winery by the owner, a kindly older british gentleman. He came from a chemisty background and was explaining to us how it impacted his work. We had a great an interesting time there, and tasted some lovely and unique wines.
We had a brief stop for lunch before moving on to the Smelly Cheese Shop. Mmmmmm cheese. Needless to say, this was one of the highlights, trying some nice fettas and buying some other lovely cheeses.
Our final winery was a jovial affair, with many bad jokes, and more wine. Once we were done it was time to load back into the minibus and have a snooze on the way home.
It may be that we were spoilt by Waipara and Malborough, or the fact that neither of us are great red wine drinkers - but on the whole we weren’t that impressed by the wines. We tasted a few nice ones, but on the whole were a little disappointed.
That being said, we had a good fun day - I would thoroughly recommend it. (You can see some photos here if you want).
