There's a fair bit of "art" in Melbourne, street art in particular and the city centre is made up of narrow "lanes" between buildings (think Brighton) some of these have been handed over to graffiti artists to decorate, some of it is amazing. I particularly liked this Koala, more on Koalas later.
So, while eating lunch on our bike tour I got chatting to our guide, a really nice young chap called Leo, I was saying how crazy the price was for our hotel to provide a car to take us to the vineyards in the Yarra valley and he offered to do it for a third of the price in his own car, the only caveat was that he wanted to bring his girlfriend, of course we said and the date was booked!
Leo dutifully picked us up from our hotel and we drove up to the winery that we wanted to visit, Yarra Yering one of my favourite Australian wine producers. We had a great chat with the youngsters in the car, they were the same age (roughly) as our kids and were really engaged and interested in hearing about their lives. Leo was one of these people who work hard but also have an adventurous life, he worked at least 3 jobs (including bike tour guide) but occasionally took six months off to travel, he told us all about his latest trip to the "Stans" in Asia, sometimes he climbs a mountain (to cycle down!) He had a keen business head too, I reckon he'll go far, and if he doesn't it won't matter, he'll have thoroughly enjoyed the ride. It made us think about things, perhaps Leo had it right, maybe being a slave to salary and career (like we were) isn't the best way to go, anyway we quickly sidelined the philosophical stuff once a dozen glasses of delicious wine were plonked in front of us!!
In the photo above you can see our empty tasting sheet, each one of the circles would be covered by a glass of the wine whose name appears in the circle. Of course (as is normal with private tastings) we had a couple of extras, interesting stuff that was open and our host was keen for us to try.
Here's the same tasting sheet full of glasses, proper glasses too, none of this thick cheap stuff, lead crystal from Austria, Riedel in fact even though they had been etched with the name of the producer. You can't see it in this picture but we also had a plate of lovely cheeses (and crackers) to pair with the tasting, and again, I was really impressed with Australian cheese, I reckon it would even fool a Frenchman!
Here are some of the wines we tried, combinations of Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay plus a few other varietals and blends, a splendid selection. I also loved the vertical of their flagship wine (imaginatively named "Dry Red Number 1") which is a "Bordeaux Blend" i.e. Cab-Sav, Merlot and Petit-Verdot, the head wine maker changed during the vintages that we tasted, and you could really taste the effect on the style, both nice but personally I preferred the older style.
The view from the tasting room was pretty spectacular, in the foreground the vines and in the background the rolling hills of the Yarra valley, we even saw a Kangaroo hopping around, I snapped the picture below to show this view.
Once completed (2 hours later) Leo drove by and picked us up, driving us back into the city and dropping us off at our hotel. Later that evening we treated him to a slap up Chinese meal in the City (which only cost 20 quid each) and bid our farewells, what a nice bloke. Street art of Koala bears and Kangaroos hopping around whetted our appetite for some wildlife viewing, we'd run out of time in Melbourne so that would have to wait until our next destination, Perth was calling, more on that in the next part.
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