Having seen so many dramatic landscapes by now, the sight between Perth and Margaret River was a bit disappointing. Australia got us accustomed to the spectacular and now it wanted to fob us with the ordinary? Come on, you can do better than that. No? Alright then, I hope the wines will make up for that. In Cowamarup we stopped at the Margaret River Regional Wine Centre to ask for a guided tour to some wineries. Good gracious, they have some nice drops there, about 95% of all wineries are presented and we could have started a tasting there and then, but....you know...think of drink and drive? Think again.
They pointed us towards the Visitor Centre in town to book such a tour which we did (better let somebody else do the driving) and resorted to our hostel.
What a hostel...... I have seen some while travelling but this was.....in some way outstanding...kind of. I immediately decided not to cook in this kitchen, in fact we didn't even had breakfast in there but went to a café, this filthy it was. In the night some drunken guys had a go in there, left the light on plus the fans in both kitchen and bathroom so it was pretty loud.
I'm not fussy, but there are some basic rules that make a thing like a hostel work and one is to show some consideration for your fellows. Which they didn't. When the party noise finally subsided, I woke up again due to the lights and the rustling of the fans and made the big mistake to enter the kitchen barefooted to switch them off. Bad idea, as someone had flooded the kitchen floor with I-don't-know-what and I stepped right into it. Uurrgh.....
Of course no one bothered about removing it the next morning but when they got up at 5am to go to work they merely spread the puddles evenly across the whole room.
I am not sure if there ever was a major epidemic starting from this kitchen but I was not eager to find out. So it was a no-go area for me from that point on.
Thank goodness we had that winery tour to look forward to. After an early lunch (the worst Fish&Chips I ever had, but it was a solid base for the tasting) we were picked up by Dave, a former High School Teacher, for the tour. A group of about 15, some Kiwis, some Aussies, some Poms, a French and a German girl, a Canadian couple, all quite enthusiastic, greeted us on board and off we went.
The first winery we visited was a small, family-run one only founded 8 years ago. The guy doing the tasting with us was a professional seller who would jabber till your ears bled if you let him. But he offered us some really good wines, especially the Chenin Blanc was a real treat. So we bought some, not yet knowing how we'd bring them home safely. But we were to be in the country for a few more days, so who knows what might happen.
The next one was a complete disappointment. The owners looked like they were their best customers, the estate was built in a kind of Australiana Style (?), lots of corrugated iron and wooden planks, and the best thing about the whole winery was this cutie called Sam.
All the wines, the Chenin Blanc, the Sauvignon-Semillon blends, tasted like biting into freshly mown grass ( and , no, Mike, I have never tried freshly mown grass, it was just the way it smelled that brought up the image ... ) and after the third wine I uncoupled from our group and let the following glasses pass from me. Even the port they served at the end was barely drinkable. I felt a bit sorry for the guys when I saw that I was not alone in my opinion; most of the others used every unobserved moment to get rid of the contents of their glasses as well. I wonder who drinks this kind of stuff? Surely they must make a living from it, they have been around for quite some years and their equipment looked pretty new. It's a miracle to me.
The next one made up for everything again. If anyone ever comes across wines from Churchview Estate, Margaret River, give them a try. Excellent. Nothing less.
They surely make you pay for that quality, but most let you pay even more for a lot less. Their unwooded Chardonnay even convinced me (and I'm a kind of ABC-drinker) and the Semillon-Sauvignon Blanc had such subtle fruit flavours, ....
Although the region is not famous for their red wines, they make a good enough Shiraz as well. The owner himself showed us around and did the tasting and did a brilliant job with it, talking about the fermentation process, what barrels they use and why, about the advantages of screw caps ( I wish some of the customers in my father-in-law's winery could have heard him....) and he provided me with some really good arguments that I can use for myself now.
After that we went to see a chocolate factory
But it was good that it was the last one, I would have not been able to cope with a single more. So we called it a day and Dave brought us back to the hostel were we took a quick shower, changed clothes and headed for the "Settlers", a pub in Margaret River that has a lot of live music on almost every night and some good food as well.
So how does the saying go : Wine upon beer is a very good cheer. Beer upon wine you'll repine.
I can't confirm that. I was fine with it, and boy, what an evening we had.
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