Our 2019 trip to OZ

First of all, we apologise for not sharing some details about our trip to Australia sooner. As you might imagine, 2019 has been busy: meeting new winemakers and sourcing new products, as well as expanding our portfolio and our business. On a personal note, this year has been a bit of a roller coaster too - but now we're truly ready for an exciting end to the year ahead!

Our brand new wines will arrive in a few weeks' time (more on this very soon) and we're also in the process of planning a couple more tastings, as well as preparing our participation at the amazing charity fair 'International Bazaar'. Let's start with a few facts about our trip to Australia back in April:

• We stayed for 11 nights
• Visited 5 different wine regions across 2 States
• Drove >2000km
• Celebrated Dean's birthday at the amazing Hentley Farm restaurant

Visiting South Australia in autumn is beautiful and the colours of the landscapes and vineyards were simply stunning!

Stop 1: Barossa Valley

We started our trip around SA by heading to the Barossa Valley, an hours' drive North of Adelaide. Here, we stayed on the iconic Seppeltsfield Road which is one of our favourite spots in the area. Palm trees line the street that leads you to gorgeous wineries, exquisite restaurants and distilleries. Hentley Farm is also located here. There's an excellent choice of accommodations in the area and this time we stayed at the Villas, environmentally sensitive upmarket cabins that had only just opened. For anyone planning a trip to the Barossa, we can highly recommend Cath and Grant's place. During our stay, the annual Barossa Wine Auction took place and Christie Schulz (Owner of Turkey Flat Vineyards) kindly invited us to join her and the Fabulous Ladies of Wine for a very interesting afternoon.

Our trip wouldn't have been complete though with a stop at Turkey Flat's amazing and newly revamped cellar door. We tasted some old favourites and new vintages, including the Butcher's Block with its very cool new label!

Stop 2: Adelaide Hills

We continued our journey through the Adelaide Hills, where we stopped at Applewood Distillery in Gumeracha to find an array of exciting things happening. It's great to see that these guys are always working on new ideas and we can't wait for the next arrival of Applewood Gin, including a special limited release of their Wattleseed Gin.

Next en route was Paracombe, where we were invited by Kathy and Paul to overnight in their gorgeous guest room with the most amazing view: (Unfortunately we missed the opportunity to take a picture when the kangaroos were jumping around... Argh!) We went for a drive around their vineyards before a cellar visit and tasting some fun stuff out of the tanks, then concluded the evening with much delicious food and wine in the company of lovely people and great hosts. Some snapshots from our drive around Paracombe:

Stop 3: Can you guess?

The next day we had an early start as we were making our way 400km South to meet with the winemaker whose bottles are currently on the ship and will arrive in Luxembourg at the beginning of November... Who it is will be revealed very soon... In the meantime, stay tuned for the next parts of this story. So far, we've only covered 2 out of 5 regions, so there's more to come!