Regardless of excellence, after five wineries in a couple of hours, the palate tends to become a little jaded.
Although the prospect of visiting a lavender farm doesn’t exactly fill me with unalloyed delight, I didn’t mind the detour into Bridestowe Lavender Farm, and Madam positively loved it.
From there, we headed back towards the wine route and made a slight detour at Lilydale to visit Providence, the oldest vineyard in Tasmania. The cellar door is an agent for some other small Tasmanian wineries, and though you can only taste the Providence range, they do ship freight free by the dozen anywhere in Australia - a service I’m planning on utilising in the not too distant future.
We had a minor hiccough on the way to our accommodation for the next two nights as Murphy’s Law struck. In the directory, the street was located precisely at the junction of two facing pages.
And in real life, it was around a blind corner with absolutely no indication that it was coming up, but we were able to loop back to it and establish landmarks that saved us from overshooting the corner for the rest of the stay.
The cottage at Protea Hill has spectacular views across the Tamar Valley, and after an excursion in search of dinner, we found ourselves sitting on the veranda and enjoying the Providence Riesling we’d bought at the last stop on the wine trail and watching the rain squalls moving up the river valley.