There were a couple of factors that upset that particular apple cart. Madam decided she wanted to revisit Adelaide, and asked me how long I wanted to spend, respectively, in the Clare and Barossa Valleys and there were an increasing number of health issues with my father in Southport that had Hughesy shuttling back and forth between home base and the unit overlooking the Broadwater.
Dad left us in September, but we'd already made the travel arrangements by then, and were scheduling ourselves to spend a week in South Oz and some time in Southport on either side of the interstate odyssey.
Madam had suggested a couple of options, but given the fact that Clare isn't really on the way to anywhere else (except maybe the Flinders Ranges) we weren't likely to be back, so I thought we'd best try to get around as many places as we could while we were there.
Given the fact that you'd need close to a fortnight getting around the five star wineries in the Barossa, the approach there had to be more selective, but there was no way we were going to be passing Rockford without calling in.
All of which meant that by the time we'd made our way home we were on enough mailing lists to keep the Little House of Concrete effectively awash with quality wine, and once the financial details of sorting out Dad's estate had been looked after things loosened up considerably as far as the finances were concerned, and with the debt associated with the LHoC finally paid off in full I had an extra $300 per month that could be spent on something, so my thoughts, unsurprisingly, turned to upgrading the quality end of what was coming into the wine rack.
Assuming that I was already buying, say, a $7.50 bottle and a $12.50 bottle to average out to the ten dollar mark, a long term $20 average would mean that the third bottle could go to somewhere around the $40 mark and we'd still be looking good as far as the budget was concerned.
Alternatively, with a five price point calculation, $7.50, $12.50, $15, $20 and $45 still averaged out around $20. That'd mean, say, an order from the Tahbilk Everyday Drinking Range, something from The Wine Society, entry level wines from a couple of good wineries and something getting towards the premium end of the market.
We didn't get to anywhere interesting as far as the wine side of things was concerned in 2009, initially due to concerns about the financial implications of sorting out Dad's estate. While I knew that there'd be enough money there to meet the bills I wasn't sure that it'd actually be there when the executors needed it, so it was a case of keeping the spend under control while those matters were sorted out.
Concerts by Elvis Costello and Ry Cooder appeared on the horizon once those matters had been settled, and so that was that as far as wine travel was concerned in 2009.
2010, on the other hand, was going to be a different matter. I'd pencilled in a trip across to Western Australia on the Indian Pacific, and while visiting wineries wasn't the be all and end all of the trip, if we were in the neighbourhood the odd taste was more or less mandatory.
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