The tea and herbs must have done their magic because I awoke this morning feeling pretty darn good, all things considered. I got up around 6:00 a.m. took another handful of herbs, made some tea (I wish I had some more of that stuff from Bliss Café!), and said some prayers for continued health. We then got showered and dressed and headed downstairs where they have a coffee shop connected to the lobby (thank you, God!). I got a soy ‘flat white’, which is basically a latte with less milk, to buzz me awake so I could taste wine all day that would make me sleepy later (funny, huh?).
Our driver, Tracy, was waiting for us in the lobby. She seemed slightly miffed with us but perhaps that was because we were a couple minutes late getting down and then I had to get a coffee before we got going. Well, I figured that it was our day to go and do what we wanted so if I felt like spending a little extra time at the place I started from, so be it. Tracy turned out to be very amiable and not miffed in the slightest as she explained how it was in fact, our day to relax and go where we liked. I was all-too happy to let Tracy do the driving and she was a very capable conductor on our tour of one of the world’s best-known wine regions.
The morning air was crisp as we drove out of town into the lush hillsides of South Australia. The smells of river, forest, and mist clung to me like morning dew to the tree leaves of our surrounding landscape. The road was ours alone and it felt as though we driving through a secret as the quiet peacefulness of the environment enveloped us. The countryside felt hushed, like the earth was holding its breath and would only exhale once we passed. I didn’t feel like an intruder per se, but the message to tread lightly was clear. It was a perfect transition from cities, airplanes, hotel check-ins, and the general hustle-bustle of travelling. I breathed in, it seemed for the first time since I’d gotten to Australia, and exhaled while dropping my guard and allowing the day take me, moment-by-moment, wherever it wanted to.
We saw rare albino wallabies hopping along as we drove past a wildlife sanctuary that raised them. We must have sounded like little children to Tracy as we looked doe-eyed at the animals and the landscape while cooing and ooing at “how purdy” everything was. Before hitting the wineries Tracy took us to a place called the “Whispering Wall” which was a large retaining wall for the Barossa Reservoir. The unique acoustics of the wall make it so that if two people stand on opposite sides, you can hear each other speaking as though you were right next to each other. We truthfully joked that we got better reception on the wall than with our cell phones.
We made our way to the first Cellar Door (a.k.a. wine tasting room) soon after and grew back up from our reverted childlike states to the sophisticated, classy, wine connoisseurs that we wanted to act like; yes, that act was dropped like a hot potato as our true identities of the grape-ignorant emerged. Don’t get me wrong, I love and appreciate a good glass of wine; sometimes the whole damn bottle gets caught up in my affections, but I am a far, long, and distant cry from any level of wine expertise. I decided then and there to allow myself to get comfortable and be a child as far as the wine world was concerned.
The wine steward at our first winery was a friendly young woman with a good sense of humour and God bless her for it. My background in restaurants has made me a tiny bit more versed in wine than my beer-drinker-to-the-bone boyfriend and as I’ve said, I love the stuff but Keevin… not so much. He would only drink sweeter whites and well, I’m a “big reds” kind of girl. Keevin tried the reds but it’s just not his thing so he stuck with the sweeter, dessert-oriented whites. I suppose I won’t be painting new spots on that leopard anytime soon and that’s just fine by me; I’m happy to take my own private delight in the secret realms of red. I enjoy white wine in warmer weather; give me a nice glass of pinot grigio on a summer day and call me a happy girl. But I was very impatient to get through the white wine tasting and climb all aboard the Big Reds Train; after the 2nd Cellar Door, I skipped the white wine warm-up altogether.
I have never felt so vitally present with wine as I did in the Barossa Valley; I realized that wine is not only a gratifying exploration of the grape but also a virtual meditation-in-a-glass that approaches transcendence. If you shut everything else out of your mind except all things concerning your vino, you will find that an entirely new Universe teeming with diverse life forms opens up to you. Waves of flavour-filled sensation carried me upon rapturous currents as my palate, like the grape, was plumped and ripened by the fruits and cask woods of the winemakers’ handiwork. The wine actually began to take on various personalities to me; by the end of the day I wasn’t describing the flavours as “herbaceous” or “up-front Black Forest fruit with heavy tannins throughout” but as “seductive”, “cheeky”, and sometimes downright “bitchy with a middle finger flipped at the finish”. I marvelled at this discovery while Tracy and the wine stewards gave each other a knowing nod that said, “She’s been initiated; it’s official now… she’s hooked.” The layers of experience from nose to finish were rich to say the least and I can’t wait to further my study of The Grape; I feel she has more secrets to reveal and if you’re reading this, Ms. Grape, I promise not to tell ;-)
The day left me feeling like one of Bacchus’ dancing maenads, aplomb in my grape-induced ecstasy that bordered Divine Madness. After a few more rounds of wine tasting, coffees, food sampling, and more scenic driving, we were finally taken back to our apartment in Adelaide. Exhausted, and basically drunk, we zombie-walked our way into the building and finally shuffled into the bedroom where we performed simultaneous nose-dives into bed. It was an incredibly delicious spiritual journey, traversed along a route of gustative rapture. Although the wine’s flow has ceased, the gratitude for my experience with it continues in an onward pour.
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