Close Encounters of the Bloodwood Kind
While there will be readers who’d ascribe the southern odyssey to the fact that we’d become aware of the existence of Bloodwood Wines, I should point out Madam was talking about heading to Canberra in the autumn even before we’d headed off on the trip across the Nullarbor.
On the other hand, once we’d made the discovery that this five Halliday star winery was operated by people Hughesy remembers from those halcyon days in the early seventies there was no way we’d be leaving Bloodwood off the itinerary if we were passing.
That’s not to suggest, however, we were going to be doing the usual Hughesy does the wineries bit while we were there. Under ordinary circumstances once we’re in the vicinity of wineries there’s an inclination to see how many visits we can cram in, and we usually manage five or maybe six, preferably with lunch at one of them. At each stop it’s a case of wander into the tasting area, sample the range, try to have a bit of a chat with whoever’s on the premises, add the details to their mailing list if we've been impressed and head on to the next one with (maybe) a bottle or two for consumption in the immediate future.
The first factor that had me limiting the stops in Orange was the fact we were travelling from Coonabarabran, looking at three hours on the road to get there, and were heading off early the next morning to get to the markets in Canberra before lunch on Sunday. That meant we had, maybe, four or five hours in Orange on Saturday afternoon, so we weren’t going to be able to visit the same number of places you might manage in a full day’s touring and tasting.
I’d had a look at the other establishments that rated highly with Halliday, of course. All up, there are forty-five wineries listed, and five of them are five star operations. One didn’t appear to be open to the public, and one had a cellar door operation in the old Union Bank in downtown Orange, which might have been a dinner venue for Saturday night, so it was a question of whether we wanted to get to the other two, which might be do-able, but I wasn’t sure it was desirable.
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