So after a few days of getting our bearings around Port Elliot, SA, it was time to explore the vineyards of McLaren Vale. Being prepared as always, Jayne had a great long list of wineries to visit & had the good sense to book a 10.30am session at the d’Arenberg Cube to start the cube/ball rolling.

This included their Alternate Realities Museum, the Salvador Dali exhibition and a wine tasting at the Tasting Room on the top floor of the cube.

Dali has been a favourite artist for me since high school. He was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his eccentricity, technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his work.

That last photo is Dalí in the 1960s, sporting his characteristic flamboyant moustache, holding his pet ocelot, Babou. I’m sure he liked to pet his ocelot a lot. At other times he’d take his anteater for a walk in the streets of Paris.

“Geniuses must never die, the progress of mankind depends on us”

Salvador Dali

The Alternate Realities Museum was also a bit surreal, weird, wonderful & extended this theme into the loos in the cube. Can I just say that I don’t make a habit of taking photos in public toilets and leave it at that.

SC Panell (enoteca) was our second stop. Beautiful outlook & a selection of good wine & and a cheese plate

Angove was also a quality stop. Another stunning vista. Lots of space and as it was with SC Pannell, just us, we were the only ones there (Wine tasting tip – Go on a Monday).

Three down, how many to go Jayne…

Arrrgh, well, something we hadn’t bargained for down here was the paid tasting setup. We don’t have an issue with this system as we usually end up buying & the tasting cost comes off the bill. What did present as a logistic issue was the generous 40ml per taste in each glass.

A standard wine measure is 100ml, although most pubs would do a 150ml glass. So the generous 40ml tastes we were presented with (it took about 3 sips to get the wine down to the 40ml line on each glass) were well over half a standard drink each.

I’d nominated my self as the driver for the day & so was only having a small sip. We both hate to waste good wine, and so far it was all good! Jayne and her petite frame are not accustomed to such generous taste volumes. Particularly, when you add my leftover tastings into the equation.

Needless to say we may have peaked a bit early on our first day out & decided to pull up stumps before lunch. As we’d had ample quantity & quality of nibbles at each spot, lunch was not required or missed. Cartons of wine in the back, Jayne, snoozing her way home, up the front, it was a quiet drive home.

Our second tasting excursion was with our friends Nicole & Matt. They’re local to the Adelaide Hills & had a few spots they needed to tick off their list. So, this time we dropped by Coriole, Chalk Hill & Maxwell. Once again, 3 tastings/day seems to be our limit these days. More wine was loaded into the back & another quiet drive back to the truck. At least we managed to have lunch this time.

Taking a break from wine tasting, we discovered that a stage of The Tour Down Under (TTDU) was to finish in Port Elliot during our time here.

We walked into town, had lunch (and some noice bubbles) at the pub & enjoyed the festive mood of the growing crowd lining The Strand (the Main Street of Port Elliot) as the anticipation built up for the arrival of the racing Lycra Lizards.

We were able to keep track of their progress via a couple of very large video screens, one outside the Pub (good for business) & another up near the finish line (near the other pub, well, Hahn is one of the sponsors…). These Southern Australians appear to be pretty serious about their cycling. No expense had been spared setting up for the race.

Here’s a quick short clip of the end of the race stage about 200m from the finish.

Whoosh! Within about 30 seconds the whole mass of flesh & carbon fibre had shot by & the race day was done.

Inspired by TTDU Jayne created some home made Muesli Bars to take on our future bike rides. The first batch, unfortunately, never made it into a pannier as they were all consumed in the rigorous quality control process that we have in place. A second batch has since been hatched. Most of our honey has now been consumed in the production process in preparation for Kangaroo Island (no honey allowed).

Baking update: Jayne changed from rice bran oil to pumpkin seed oil in our daily bread recipe with interesting results. We sourced the pumpkin seed oil from Pumpkin Seeds Australia when we passed thru Ovens, VIC. Fresh home baked Gluten Free bread. I can see you’re all green with envy, as was this loaf!

Tastes good but! Nom, nom, nom.

22 Jan This entry was published on 22/01/2024 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.