The Nation’s premier wine and food tourist region, South Australia’s stunning Barossa Valley, is emerging from its long winter sleep and beginning its stunning transformation from bare browns to lush green as countless vines awaken and welcome the warm spring sun. ‘Bud burst’ is now happening across the Valley - some areas faster than others - as vineyard after vineyard shrug off the cold of a mild winter and charge toward a new and exciting vintage. This is the time to plan your first visit - or return visit - to the wine region which stands head and shoulders over the rest. Follow the footsteps of the German winemakers and take in the vistas which envigorated them all those years ago and whose labours made the Barossa simply the best. Get to the Barossa and savour the sun of years past - now encapsulated in delightful vintages stretching back over decades. Sit on the terraces with the ghosts of Australia's finest winemakers and complement their fine wines with Barossa fine foods as you contemplate vintages to come. To stimulate your mental taste buds and to add depth to your Barossa visit, get our audio Talking Tours on the history and provenance of the Barossa, and our disc exploring sublime cellar door experiences as you take in this Barossa Spring!
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The Barossa Valley, Australia's premier wine and food region (as we all know!), hosted its Gourmet Weekend this August - the unofficial start to the tourist season as the Barossa begins to awaken from its winter hibernation. If you missed this year's Gourmet Weekend with friends and family - well, pity you! You missed visiting wineries with warm fires, music, good food and great company! This year we visited the iconic wineries, Jacob's Creek, Chateau Tanunda, and Pindarie Wines where we joined with the cognoscenti to enjoy this exquisite event which attracts visitors from around Australia and the world. But you don't need to wait for next year's Gourmet Weekend to experience SA's best tourist region.... As they say in the Valley, each weekend is a moment to Be Consumed in this wonderful part of Australia, where every weekend is a gourmet weekend! And to enjoy your visit even more, get our audio CD discs on the History and Provenance of the Barossa Valley, and Wine Appreciation for Cellar Door Visitors! In the meantime, check out our video on the Barossa Valley Gourmet Weekend 2014, below.... ..And while you contemplate your Barossa Gourmet Weekend visit, here's something to look at.
This pic is of the Barossa in full winter bloom, taken in the dying days of July. All the vines have had a great drink (better than last year) and are dozing in the late winter sun before bursting forth with a new vintage. This is a great time to visit the Barossa - and learn its stories from our discs. Less tourists means more time in your favourite cellar doors - and more time around the warming fires! Come on - plan your visit now!
To 'prep' yourself for your amazing Gourmet weekend, get our one-hour CD audio tours ahead of time! Learn about the History and Provenance of the Barossa Valley on our first disc, then learn about Etiquette for Cellar Door Visitors on our second disc (so you don't make an idiot of yourself when visiting the myriad cellar doors in the Valley!) Play our discs as you leave Adelaide and be 'full bottle' about the Barossa (to excuse a pun!) when you arrive for your Gourmet Weekend experience! Click here to go to our store for details!
There's something about the wursts of the Barossa Valley to fire up the mouth (...and the other end!) when you're looking for something to liven up your Ploughman's Lunch or picnic baskets as you enjoy South Australia's lingering 'Indian Summer'. Team them up with a bottle of Barossa red, and you're in heaven! Here's an idea for next weekend! Pack a lunch of dry biscuits and French sticks and get up to the Barossa. Call in at Jacobs Creek or Langmeil Wines and buy a bottle of Barossa shiraz, then grab a paté at Maggie Beers (not far off the Seppeltsfield Road), then on to Linke's Butchers In Nuriootpa to pick a stick of the best Wursts you'll find in Australia. Make your way to Menglers Hill, spread the blanket - and take in the vista of the Barossa in its late autumn light which inspired the early German settlers. Get our History and Provenance audio CD and take in the stories (including those of Linke's Butchery and Langmeil Wines) which make the Barossa Australia's premier tourist region. Great wine and food - and great memories which you'll remember forever. Bliss! Barossa Talking Tours featured in the Gawler Bunyip newspaper this week - a good yarn, and photo with 'Nipper' Fechner of Tanunda's iconic Apex Bakery, who features on our History and Provenance audio CD disc, talking about the delights which come out of his 100 year old wood-fired 'Scotch' oven. To read the story, go to the on-line version by clicking on this link - http://www.bunyippress.com.au/audio-tours-for-barossa/ Enjoy!
And Langmeil is now stocking our Barossa talking Tour discs - the Barossa History and Provenance disc, and our Wine Appreciation for Cellar Door Visitors disc. Langmeil Winery is a 'must visit' if you're touring the Valley - and beyond the superb wines, you can now buy our discs there too!
As work proceeds, the cellar door has been moved a few metres east of the old cellar door - and offers a new experience, established as it is in the old Seppeltsfield Stables. With this 'Indian Summer' we are experiencing mid-May, with temperatures in the low 20's and fine sunny days, this is a perfect time to visit the Barossa - and to visit the new Seppeltsfield Cellar Door. Apart from location, nothing else as changed, with Seppeltsfield's fine 100 year old Tawnies still available. To learn more about Seppeltsfield and its history, complement your visit by getting our Talking Tour History and Provenance audio CD tour - and if you're into Seppeltsfield's wine offerings (including its lip-smacking tawnies!) hear from Seppeltsfield's 2012 Winemaker of the Year, Fiona Donald, on our Wine Appreciation for Cellar Door Visitors audio CD. Buy them on-line - or if you're coming up through Williamstown, get our discs at Winestains, or the Baker St Bakery (see posts below). Seppeltsfield will be stocking them too in the near future as they work through the logistics of their new cellar door.
Despite the weather, good numbers were reported and Barossa participants did their best in trying conditions, promoting the Barossa and their wines.
Was it a success? Well the compliant mainstream media reported it was, but many visitors have reported it did not quite reach the same heights as earlier events run under food guru Ian Parmenter who fell out of favour with the event's organisers after the last Tasting Australia event on the banks of the River Torrens two years ago. Our view? Well yes, we have to agree. Move the event to a bigger venue next time - and the food and wine experiences (more restaurants next time please!) should be separated, as they used to be. Nevertheless, any exposure is good exposure, as they say! If you're coming up to the Barossa for Mothers Day, call in to the Baker St Bakery in Williamstown (the prettiest drive to the Barossa from Adelaide) for a coffee or cake - and to buy our Barossa Talking Tours discs! Yep, our Tours are now available at Baker St Bakery - or if you prefer, at Winestains Gallery and micro-cellar door, about 50 metres down the road from the Bakery, toward Lyndoch. Hell! Why not visit both? A coffee at Baker St, then call in on Kristal at Winestains and take in the delights of her Galley - and your first wine tasting in the Barossa! A great start to your Mothers Day in the Barossa!
State and Federal governments - and a lot of well-meaning private companies - have paid many millions of dollars to haul a rotting hulk (aka The City of Adelaide) from Scotland to Adelaide in the hope that the sad pile will become a tourist attraction somewhere in Port Adelaide. How sad. Even the penny-pinching Scots through their government contributed to the fund, to rid themselves of an eyesore that should have been broken up or torched years ago (picture source: www.bbc.com). The Scots obviously couldn’t believe their luck when the Save the City of Adelaide group and their influential friends offered them a solution they couldn’t refuse - and which they eagerly contributed to. Now as noble as that cause might be - and time will tell whether that which was once a fine ship will ever become more than a ‘middling’ tourist attraction at what was first known as ‘Port Misery’ - the question must be asked: will it work? History may record the City of Adelaide experiment as a (largely) tax-payer funded expensive folly. In the meantime, other potential tourist magnets languish through lack of modest government funding and lack of political will. We refer here to already existing train lines through regional South Australia - in particular through the Barossa Valley, the undisputed jewel in South Australia’s tourist offerings. A thoroughly well maintained train line (used to service trains from Nuriootpa’s Penrice mine - now in liquidation) is invaluable infrastructure begging for government/private investment input to resurrect THE BAROSSA WINE TRAIN. The Barossa Wine Train was launched in May 1998 and was a unique experience from Adelaide to the Barossa Valley. It operated between 1998 and 2003, and on average 10,000 to 13,000 people travelled on the train each year—70,000 passengers in total. The train received great media coverage and was reported to have injected $20 million into the economy every year - but significant world events (9/11, terrorism, SARS, the outbreak of bird flu et al) contributed to forcing the train off the rails in 2003. Despite strident efforts by the (now retired) local MP for the Barossa, The Hon. Ivan Venning, the then (and recently re-elected) Labor Government has so far refused to provide funding to re-instate the train, despite the fact that it has spent millions on attracting tourists to the Barossa with its highly successful ‘Be Consumed’ campaign. Now, in 2014, one group is trying to do something about it - and resurrecting other abandoned train lines through rural South Australia. The REGIONAL RAIL IN SA ACTION GROUP is raising a petition to force the SA Government to get off its bureaucratic bum and bring trains back to the regions - for tourism, and commuter traffic. We urge you to sign the petition (you can do it electronically, on-line). See the details below, but before you do, read our take on what may be possible (Tourism Minister Leon Bignell take note!) Let’s resurrect the BAROSSA WINE TRAIN. The rolling stock exists, it just needs refurbishment. We’re no train experts, but consider this: Let’s set up the train this way - one or two VIP carriages (let’s use the old-fashioned term, ‘first class’). These first-class carriages would offer a level of service and accoutrements similar to ‘Gold’ standard on the iconic Ghan train (high quality Barossa Valley food platters and nibbles, with premium wines for example, served by attendants). Then a number of ‘second class’ carriages offering pre-packaged Barossa foods (Linke’s mettwursts and delights from Tanunda’s Apex Bakery spring to mind, along with ‘airline’ bottles of Barossa wine). Then a number of ‘commuter’ carriages for locals starved of public transport to and from Adelaide.
In the meantime, we urge you to share our blog with anyone with an interest in the Barossa Valley and tourism.
AND WE URGE YOU to sign the petition to resurrect regional train services - particularly those to the Barossa Valley. Click here to go to the petition page.
With the early Barossan settlers' Osterhase (or Easter Bunny) hopping away to hibernation for another year - but with the school holidays still in full swing and the Anzac break upon us, this is a great time to visit the Barossa as Autumn settles over the Valley. As you see in our pictures here, the lush green vines of summer have given up their fine vintage and the exquisite autumn yellows and greens of the myriad vines are casting an unforgettable glow over the Barossa - and with temperatures ranging from 22 degrees to 26 degrees and only slightly cloudy days for the next week, the Barossa is at its best. This Easter Monday night is balmy and the stars are at their brightest on a cloudless night. So get up to the Valley - and get our Talking Tours to make the most of your visit. Use our Contact Form on our website www.barossatalkingtours.com and if you're coming through Williamstown, we'll arrange for you to pick up your tour - or of course we can post them to you! |
AuthorBarossa Talking Tours provides an entertaining and informative look at the Barossa Valley as an audio tour - perfect for car or caravan! Archives
December 2014
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