Clare Valley - A Walk Through the Riesling Trail

Later that day, we proceeded to meet up with my third reader, Casey, in Cocolat.

The one and only infamous chocolate cafe in Adelaide.




My favourite place in town, knowing me as a chocolate addict, Bryan did not hesitate to usher me to this place for our little meet up.




What nicer way to meet someone while eating in euphoria.

Now the joke was, when Casey first messaged me on email to ask to meet up for a drink, I quickly invited her to join us in our little plan to rent a car further up North this time into Clare Valley, a two hours ride from Adelaide.

She promptly replied and agreed. It was all very spontaneous and we were all very excited. I arranged us all to meet in Cocolat to discuss about our following day roadtrip to the wineries.

Little did I know and expect, when Casey showed up, I was shocked to no ends.




I honestly was expecting a girl!!

I meant, correct me if I was wrong, but, wasn't Casey supposed to be a girl's name? Wasn't it? o.O




I further threaded on the thin friendship water by asking her, I mean him *cough*, if he was gay the next day.

Sorry darling!!! I just never met any guy who enjoys desserts as much as I do whose name's like a girl!


That night, Bryan bailed out on us to fulfill his work commitments (boo!) but left his credit card for us to rent a car from town. Casey picked up the car 8am in the morning and met up with Jessie, then they drove out to meet me at Ann's place (my couchsurfing's host who's living in the urban area).




I woke up with a Toyota roaring at the front yard,

quickly I jumped up, put on my scarf, hat and jumper and quickly grabbed two apology cookies from the cookie jar in the kitchen which I was generously offered to abuse, dashed out and into the backseat before I fall asleep again.




Oh yea, halfway through the journey I took the ends of my long hair, and stuck it out at the front like a fringe.




I thought I looked rather cool.

It took us 2.5 hours to reach Clare valley, having made a slight detour, two U-turns, and god knows what other forsaken routes, but I had a list of wineries I wanted to visit in hand so the moment we hit the valley, we wasted no time hopping from one winery to the next hunting for the wine.




Clare Valley was (is) famous for their Rieslings.




However, I have always preferred sweet late harvest aka dessert wine rather than the orthodox preference most wine connoisseurs would go for.




Like this one for example.




We're at Jim Barry, a rather well known commercialized winery (like Jacob's Creek in Barossa Valley) in Clare, where this lady barrister showed us this rather highly concentrated red wine, 12 tonnes of grapes in a bottle.

At AUD195 per bottle (keep in mind whatever the exchange rate, it's almost double the price here in Malaysia, the usual wine rate at most wineries were going from AUD10-25 per bottle, occasional AUD35 for dessert wines),




I found the taste too intense for my liking.

When I say intense, I meant I could hardly swallow it.





Err... no thanks lady.


Clare Valley was even more beautiful than Barossa Valley. To start with, the valley itself was much bigger, and hence the land stretched far out into the horizon.


Click here for wallpaper size.





We went down to the vineyard to take some shots.




It might appeared sunny, but it was still pretty chilly back in August.




We spent the entire day hopping from one winery to the next, visiting at least 10 that day, trying more wines than I ever had in my entire life.




It was like a marathon of drinking,




and drinking,




and drinking,




then cat hugging,




jam tasting,




and learning about how to make Olive Ice Cream,




Took a break for lunch at a winery restaurant that's very grandmother house looking.




Eating bread drizzled with wine,




then more wine tasting,




Back to drinking,




and finally, yes... drinking.




My god, I was sure I drank more than 5 dozen glasses of wine that day. I could be wrong, but heck, it was insane, I was tipsy, singing, dancing, prancing all the way with Jessie. And guess what, Casey, drank as much as I have, was still sober as hell, and even managed to drove us safely back to Adelaide.

o.O

Back in Adelaide, we went shopping for a sleeping air mattress for me to sleep over at Jessie's place.

In Harvey Norman, I spotted a HUGE 6-men tent!




Right! I'm going camping this April in the vineyards from Melbourne to South Australia, who's coming with me!