drinking wine

today i learned exactly how far away i was from home(ish) i am 17241km from DC. 17594 from NYC. i am a long way from home. i learned this at the giant rocking horse - the first stop on my tour of barossa valley - a well known wine growing region north of adelaide.

we started on a beautiful and winding gorge road that followed a t-something river. it was a good thing there had been no wine yet - bc it was very very windy. our first stop was a wooden toy factory with the world's largest rocking horse for tea and cofee. then we stopped at some australian-famous dried fruit place.

wolf blass was our first wine, a large winery at 11am. we tried 6 wines and then headed to lunch. i had the grilled kangaroo and it was quite good - but lunch was huge and filling - so it slowed the drinking down just a bit.

the next winery was my favourite called vinecrest. it was a small winery, but the wines were excellent. and the owner was the one giving us all the information and making us laugh. there we sampled 8 different wines and then off we went. we went to two more small, but pleasant wineries after that - it was a filling day (in more ways than one) and it was no surprise that most slept the way back to adelaide. i did.

the wineries and the whole area were all green and lush and beautiful, plus they all had gorgeous roses. apparently roses are susceptible to the same diseases, fungi, and pests as grapes, but the roses get attacked first, so farmers use the roses as indicators for what might be going to happen to their grapes and then treat the vines appropriately. i thought that was neat. also, a lot of the vines had bean crops or other crops that add nitrogen in the soil planted between them. these crops are not harvested, but are simply tilled back into he ground to naturally fertilize the wine.

i got dropped off at the markets where i picked up cheese and croissants and then headed back to dan's on the bus. some crazy lady almost hit the bus (she didnt) but she still felt the need to stop and harass the bus driver. me and three other ladies sat there and made fun of her - attitude, dress, hair, etc. and it was so funny bc they were all older than me.