Going For Broke

Wine Tasting in the Hunter Valley Part 1

Once again I have ventured beyond the nurturing confines of Sydney and, bizarrely, once again Tony, Natali, Jason and Idette have agreed to welcome me.  On a day when it was so cold polar bears were hunting Eskimos for their skins a dozen or so like minded people abandoned their children (not me officer) and converged on the Hunter Valley.

The Hunter Valley is famous for horse studs, coal mines and wineries, I think it is fair to say that nobody present gave a damn about coal mines or horse studs.  Despite their previous experiences Tony and Natali invited me (and about ten other people) to celebrate Tony's fortieth birthday in a welter of wine, cheese and frost.  The Hunter is rather chilly this time of year.

In any well organised society the major wine producing areas would be located an easy five minute walk from the central business district, possibly in place of the botanical gardens which do nothing except sit there gulping carbon dioxide.  Sadly in our less well regulated world the Hunter Valley is a two and a half hour drive from Sydney.  This meant that our sojourn to the Hunter started in the traffic clogged streets of the CBD.

As we headed north through some of the more tree infested suburbs of Sydney I got slightly obsessed by palm trees.  There is apparently no suburb so well provided with trees that the local government doesn't think things would be improved by planting a few palms.  Let me be quite clear; a suburb of Cairo might be improved by the addition of palm trees (or running water or representative government) but a suburb in Sydney really can't.  It becomes even more ridiculous when there are obviously still quite a few more or less native trees hanging around waiting to be noticed.  Still the corruption of local government by the pervasive influence of big palm is a topic for another day.

Soon enough the palmy suburbs of northern Sydney were a distant memory as the scenery gradually changed from urban to rural or, to be more accurate, from suburban street to motorway.  I didn't really notice the change as I was reading a magazine but I looked up in time to see one of the tell tale signs that the city was far behind us; a backyard full of cows and a front yard full of car wrecks.

My knowledge of viticulture is limited to say the least but I do know wine is usually produced from grapes.  Thus I was expecting grape heavy vines amid the rolling countryside.  The countryside did indeed roll except where it was going straight up and down but grapes were in rather short supply.  It was Winter and as we approached our destination it looked rather like we were travelling through a region of highly successful stick farmers.  Our destination incidentally was the small town of Broke where Tony and Natali had hired a house for the weekend.  Thus we had spent the preceding two and a half hours going for Broke.

I apologise for the previous joke, I just couldn't help myself.

On arrival we milled around making helpful comments to each other about how freaking cold it was and then allocated ourselves sleeping quarters, there are advantages to being the first to arrive.  After which it was time to unpack the car, look around and totally fail to get a roaring fire going.  Fortunately the place had heating independent of a bunch of city dweller's ability to set wood on fire. As I helped Tony and Natali unload the wine I couldn't help wondering if they were in the Hunter Valley to purchase wine or make a delivery.

Guests and pizza trickled in throughout the course of the evening and enough of a dent was made in the wine supply to make me wonder whether Tony and Natali had brought enough.  The spa was investigated and discussed at length particularly as regards its use by the more female members of our group but eventually nobody did.  The problem was that the house was warm and the spa was warm but the fifteen second journey between the two would have had a casualty rate equivalent to Scott of the Antarctic's last journey and we didn't even have any huskies to eat.

So after much, increasingly incoherent, banter we all retired to bed.

Apparently I snored.