After polishing off the remaining breakfast ingredients, once we’d packed up and loaded the chariot, we headed off for a flying visit to Annie’s Lane before a side-track through Mintaro so we could try to get a couple of photos of Martindale Hall en route to the Barossa.
When we arrived at the old Quelltaler Winery (nowadays Annie’s Lane) we learnt the overnight weather had done a bit more than rumble ominously. Significant power outages between Clare and Auburn meant that we were probably lucky to have progressed as far as we had. The morning’s breakfast and ironing activities, in particular, would have been grossly hampered by lack of power.
The accommodation at Tuscany had come with a handy 20% discount voucher for use at Annie’s Lane, which was, to be honest, the main motivation for the visit (just in case we ran across anything interesting, you understand). In the end I ended up having a cursory taste of what was on offer. The range didn’t seem to be offering anything out of the ordinary and the wines are widely available and often discounted.
Everything I tried was sound, well-made and perfectly acceptable. I’d be happy with the Riesling if it turned up on a restaurant wine list, for instance. In our part of the world that’d be a likely prospect, but over the past couple of days I’d tried a number of wines that would, in my opinion, be much better investments when you’re looking at a dozen bottles you’re not likely to find at the local bottle shop.
We arrived at Martindale Hall to find the gates closed, and since they weren’t scheduled to open for another twenty minutes (all we wanted was a couple of photos, after all) we decided to bid a fond farewell to the Clare Valley and make for the winemaking big smoke.
The trip through Manoora, Riverton, Tarlee and Kapunda was totally uneventful apart from a mild degree of concern as to whether the fuel supply would hold out, and just before midday we turned off in Tanunda in search of parking and information.
On the way we’d passed Penfolds and a host of other wineries that it would probably be worth a visit, but a quick check in the Barossa guide book we picked up listed fifty-five wineries, so, working on, say, five a day we’d be looking at more than a week and a half if we were going to be visiting them all. As it was, we didn’t have a full day at our disposal before the car was due back in Adelaide.
In any case, after the previous three days in Clare any suggestion along those lines would have been tantamount to relationship suicide and I’d figured out that we could probably visit two without too much drama. The question was, under the circumstances, which two?
Which is where the research factor comes in.
Given the obvious numerical constraints I’d restricted my research to the places Mr Halliday had assigned five start, but that meant we were still looking at twenty-one wineries after I’d eliminated anything that wasn’t
It was obvious other selection criteria were needed.
For a start there was no way I wanted to pull into somewhere that was, even on a Friday afternoon, likely to be packed, which immediately ruled out some of the higher-profile establishments.