AUS Day 41 - Wine, wine and more wine!

Our last day involved a step up in class compared with the rest of the holiday. We had booked onto a wine tasting tour, and were collected outside St Paul's Cathedral at 08:50 by what can only be described as the Rolls-Royce of minibuses (it was actually a Mercedes) . OK that's a bit of an over exaduration (this is the second guest post by Peter) but it was pretty smart compared to our previous transport; automatically opening doors and seats that were so far reclined they were almost uncomfortable.

First stop on our tour of the Yarra valley was Yering Station, the oldest winery in the region to sample some local wines, which mainly turned out to be Chardonnay and Pinot Noir due to these grape varities being particularly well suited to the climate. All were very nice, although some more so than others. What surprised us most was that some of the people on the tour decided not to taste any wine. Seriously, who books onto a wine tour if you have no interest in trying some wine? The clue is in the title.

Stop 2 was at a local dairy to sample the cow and goat cheeses, then it was time to head to the next winery, Domain Chandon. This place makes champagne that isn't called champagne for geographical reasons. They also had a funny idea of a tasting, deciding to provide one full glass of a choice of four, to each person rather than smaller samples, oh well, Tash and I made sure we had different  champagnes (or Chandons, to be PC) and then swapped.

Next was Rockford wines for more tasting and lunch. Rockford wines apparently produced the worlds best Pinot Noir in 2006, and a Californian guy on the tour was very keen to try some (it wasn't included in the tasting as it was $80a bottle - about £50). He therefore kindly bought some for the group to taste. It was nice but not nicer than the other pinot noir they let us taste (the cheaper one). I didn't mention this!

We then went to a micro brewery for some beer and cider tasting, Tasha even tried the beers, athough she was wearing a 'this is disgusting' face most of the time. 

Next it was back to tasting wine at Coombe farm. If I am honest by this point  the wine was all tasting pretty similar to each other. The ladies at Coombe farm were very generous with their tasting samples and with the quantity of wine to taste (8!! different types). This didn't help the Californian guy who was clearly starting to feel the effects of the bottle of the worlds best Pinot noir that he had polished off.

Our final stop of the day was the chocolate factory, where I made sure I thoroughly sampled the white, milk and dark chocolate. These were served in chocolate drop form - huge bowls from which you could take spoonfuls at a time. (I made sure to recheck the samples were still ok "a couple" ie nine times per bowl).

Finally it was time to round off our last day in Melborne and head back to the appartment, via Carlton Park, Melbourne Musuem and the Old Gaol.