Three weeks ago, on a sunny Saturday, we were standing behind the counter of one of the more than hundred of friendly and famous vineyards in Hunter Valley. It was our second journey to this area: this time we went with our parents(-in-law), but the previous occasion was last May with our great Spanish friend. In May, winter here began to kick in (yeah, with its 15-20 Celsius degrees during the day..), and now it was the end of the summer. Therefore it was interesting to see how nature and the atmosphere changes in different seasons.

About the location…Hunter Valley is about 150-200 km north of Sydney, which takes two or three hours by car, according to the speed limits. The most interesting and famous part of this wine region is the so called `Lower Hunter`, which is surrounded by the towns of Cessnock, Kurri-Kurri, Singleton, Broke, Wollombi and Pokolbin. This part of Hunter Valley is very famous because of its vineyards, grapeyards and many entertaining events that bring enormous amounts of tourists here. You can find here `more than 60 restaurants, 120 vineyards and 160 places for accommodation`. But in my opinion, these vineyards are rather some kind of promoting and sales-supporting, nicely furnished places - very modern, trendy, or even traditional-. So if you expect some very old, stone-built cellars under the ground, you should know that it is not that kind of place. It is for business, for hospitality, for tourists, and for building the world-wide known big brands.

The best thing in these vineyards, that you can have a look at their wine cards, and taste the wines, several in every places, for free!! You can visit as many places as you want and are able to, until they close at 5 pm. Bad luck though if you are the driver (((

You will find this area really nice and friendly, with its green hills, sheep and other animals on farms, and you will see a lot of grapeyards, olive trees, and so on. The vineyards are very close to each other: if you go by car, you can stop every two or three minutes at one of them. They have clean and big car parks, and sometimes they are in the neighborhood of a cheese-, olive- or chocolate factory, where you can taste some other delicates, too. If you want to have a picnic with your friends or family, it also will not be a problem, because there are lots of bbq and picnic areas as well.

It is worth entering the Hunter Valley from the Cessnock direction first, because there is a large information centre about the Hunter Valley. It contains all kinds of information about the region: vineyards, accommodation, restaurants, entertainment, etc. You can get a very useful and free map about the region, containing all the vineyards and other locations, and there is a large amount of other brochures and booklets, prospects, not only about H.V., but also about the touristic sites in whole NSW. You can find there really useful and free maps as well.

We asked them for some information about picnic places in the area, and the lady gave us a sheet of paper that contained all the bbq places and also the guided tours and timetables. It was really practical, and we decided to visit the one-hour tour at Tyrrell`s vineyard, where 5 dollar per person was a really fair price for it. The funny thing was, that before the tour began, all participants had to sign a paper to make sure that they are over 18 years old, didn’t matter whether they were only 20 or 60+.

Ps. If you are interested in the famous aussie
`big things` -like Big Banana, Big Pineapple, Big Guitar, etc.-, visit Singleton, here you can find the World`s biggest Sundial, and Pokolbin, where there is a Big Wine Bottle. Unfortunately, we just missed it, because we did not know about them before going there…(((

(to be continued)

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