The Barossa

We flew from San Francisco to Sydney and immediately from Sydney to Adelaide, hired a car, and drove (on the left side of the road!) to our first destination, the Barossa Valley. The Barossa is a little more than an hour north of Adelaide, and is one of the most famous wine- and food- producing areas in the country.

The Peppers Hermitage was a good base of operations for a day of wine tasting -- friendly staff, wonderful setting, and excellent central location.

For the most part we visited small wineries whose products weren't readily available in the shops near Palo Alto. (We can always get Penfolds and Jacob's Creek, for example.) Some highlights among them were Henschke, Two Hands, Heritage, Whistler, and Seppelts (especially for ports and tokays).

For dinner, we doubt you can go wrong anywhere in the Barossa. But the standout for us was Barr-Vinum in Angaston, recommended by our friend Louisa Holzschuher.

Also, don't miss Maggie Beer's Farm Shop (where, among other things, we learned that "chook" is not a fish).

To see a larger version of one of the photos below, just click the small version. At the bottom of each large photo you'll find links you can click to take you back to the previous photo, forward to the next, back to this index page, or back to the arden.org home page. (So if you start with the first large photo, you can step through them all by clicking the "Next Photo" links. The link on the last large photo page returns you to this index page.) At the bottom of this page there's a link you can click to take you back to the 2005 Australia Trip index page.

Courtyard at Peppers Hermitage Barossa Valley (South Australia)		View from our room at Peppers Hermitage Barossa Valley (South Australia)		Michelle in the Sculpture Park on Mengler's Hill; Tanunda and Nurioopta in the distance Barossa Valley (South Australia)
Papier-mache chickens at Heritage Winery (aka "the place with the chickens") being prepared for the Barossa's annual scarecrow contest Barossa Valley (South Australia)		Seppelt's winery Barossa Valley (South Australia)		The grape crushers and gravity-fed waxed-concrete fermentation tanks at Seppelt's Barossa Valley (South Australia)
Seppelt's "Para" port being aged according to the solera method. Part of the port is removed from the oldest barrel at the bottom and replaced by younger port from the next highest barrel, and so on up the stack Barossa Valley (South Australia)		Penfold's winery -- a big operation! Barossa Valley (South Australia)		The Barossa Farmer's Market Barossa Valley (South Australia)