Here are some shot from the trip
this is inside some really old winery called seven hills winery, roughly 150 years old
The next few photos are from inside seppeltsfield winery. this place is amazing - absolutely ancient, and specialises in ports. They do make some normal wines as well but we only tried the ports.
inside their show off room
their collection of this years ports
old barrels. They release a new 100 year vintage every year, starting 1978.
this is ports from our birth years. 1978 on the left and michelles is 1984 on the right. see the colour difference already.
100 year old port tasting. the taste of it is just incredible. it pours out almost like a oil/syrup. the tiniest sip and you can still taste it ages later. it is pretty indescribable. suffice to say it leaves every other port I've had for dead. if you get a chance can't recommend it enough.
a few shots of the seppeltsfield storage room.
The Henschke hill of grace vineyard. we had a tour here and tasting of their high end wines. we were so lucky, being the last on the day we pretty much had half a bottle of the 08 hill of grace to ourselves.
It was pissing down raining in these photos, so i couldn't go right through the vineyard to get some good shots of the church with the vineyard in foreground. still it'll do.
inside henschke.
this is in penfolds magill estate. huge and tons of them.
this is very recently made magill estate shiraz.
2013 Grange, only recently added as well. won't see this until 2017'ish i guess?
the left row is all the 2013 grange. The chick said retail about 1.2million per barrel, and that it was a much smaller production run than normal.
The seals on the grange barrels.
the penfolds show off room
Yeah, we bought some of the 100 year old port, only 100ml though. The 375ml was just crazy at $1k. You can also buy older vintages, for example the 1884 was supposedly their best year but it's like $550 for 100ml - too much for me :p
Speaking of expensive, the grange price list at the magill penfolds restaurant. good for a laugh. we settled with a bottle of 15 year old Bin 28 which was quite nice and only $80. It was a lot cheaper doing that than doing matching wines, which was something silly like $185pp.
It wasn't the greatest experience at the restaurant so they gave us a glass of 2008 grange each to make up for it. The restaurant wasn't that crash hot, the staff were lovely though.
I have a lot more photos but just picked out a few.
in conclusions
Fave wineries
Taylors - they had some 1999 st andrews shiraz there, we got a bottle and had it that night - spectacular. I'm going to buy a couple more - a steal at $75.
Kellermeister - wild witch shiraz as awesome as ever
Primo - everything these guys make is good.
Kilikanoon
Henschke (A+++++++++) - doing the tour here is highly recommended
Penfolds - ditto
Seppeltsfield - awesome
Pikes - top rieslings
As for Henschke vs penfolds. I wouldn't say one is better than the other. The Henschke hill of roses wine was spectacular, one of the best reds I've ever had. We bought a bottle. The Hill of Grace was incredible - it's not like grange as in it's not a huge hard hitting shiraz, but it just had this delicate and long lasting quality about it - it's incredibly easy to drink. We were lucky in that we had the 08 Hill of Grace and the 08 Grange within hours of each other. The Grange is definitely not just marketing (though the pricing on both wines is pretty silly). It's a huge wine, it has so much in it - it's by far the biggest shiraz I've ever had. The flavours in it are immensely strong. They are all bloody good. We already have a 08 Grange and a 06 Hill of Grace so we didn't buy any. We won't be opening either for ages.
We do seem to like the Henschke normal wines a lot more than the penfolds normal wines. Pretty much anything made by Henschke we like, where as with penfolds we have found a few they make that we like. We tried a few wines at Penfolds, obviously liked the grange, liked the magill estate shiraz (got a bottle), but didn't like their whites and didn't like the very pricey bin 707.
cellar door pricing in general is a joke. it's like 30-40% more than at dan murphys. I'm sure dan murphys are bastards behind the scenes but we really didn't buy that many bottles of wine when we were there as the prices were just silly. I'd prefer to support the wineries directly but not at 40% more. We generally only got wines you could only get at cellar door.
hope you guys enjoyed. I just got off the phone with taylors cellar door to order 2 more of those '99 St Andrews shiraz's.
