The joys of Australian wine tourism





At Australian wineries it is possible to buy port in ten litre containers.

Alas, I found the prospect of getting this onto the plane and through British customs a little daunting, so I did not buy one. Which is a shame, as I would have been delighted to have been able to serve port out of a plastic container that looked more suitable for engine oil at my next dinner party.

I continue to move around

I am now at my brother's place in Cessnock, which is a coal mining / wine town in the Hunter Valley north of Sydney, and my last stop on this trip to Australia. The Hunter is most notable for its lovely lemony white wines based on the Semillon grape, and also makes a lot of in my mind slightly less notable shiraz based reds. And there are a few in my mind quite fine Pinot Noir, which is totally bizarre given the extremely un-Burgundy like climate.

Anyway, I shall investigate these things further in the morning.

Now in Sydney

I will blog something substantial soon. Sydney is cosmopolitan in a very predominantly Chinese Pacific Rim way (in a sense even more so than Hong Kong) whereas my sister's place in the Blue Mountains where I was yesterday is very, well, English. And the Gold Coast is sort of modern developed world internationalist. More on this soon.