Australia is the world’s fifth largest producer of wine, and its vast size means that there is a great variety of grapes that can be grown here—each region has a specialty. We took a tour to the Yarra Valley, about an hour outside of Melbourne. The climate in this part of Victoria is cool -- it is very similar to the Carneros region in Napa. Perfect for the pinot noir and chardonnay grapes that go into my favorite wine — anything sparkling! We tried five excellent sparkling wines at our first tasting room—Chandon.
At our next stop, Soumah, we had a nice tasting followed by a hearty lunch. We enjoyed getting to know the other guests in our group, who were visiting Australia from Yorkshire England, Kerry Ireland, southern Sweden, and Saskatchewan Canada. A very diverse bunch!
Our third stop of the afternoon was a highlight— De Bortoli.
Our enthusiastic sommelier Aidan introduced us to the delicious and award-winning dessert wine made here — "Noble One". It is an unfortified sweet dessert wine made from semillon grapes that have been overripened and infected with botrytis cinerea, a fungus also known as "noble rot". The fungus acts to remove the moisture from the grapes and leaves them very concentrated, so the resulting wine is naturally very sweet.
Our bus tour dropped us off in the center of town and we meandered across the river to Southbank for dinner. We noticed a huge funfair set up on both sides of the river to kick off Melbourne’s Moomba celebration. Moomba is always held over the Victorian Labour Day holiday, and is one of the largest community festivals in Australia. It's entirely free to attend (although rides and food cost money, obviously).
We strolled down the midway but didn’t feel up to getting on any rides — we were tipsy enough after a long day of wine tasting. Instead we checked out the wakeboarding competition on the Yarra River. We saw some amazing tricks and a few epic wipeouts before calling it a day and heading back to the apartment for the night.
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