Wine Country

So it turns out that we landed right in the middle of wine country in Adelaide. The famed Barossa Valley is an hour to the North and McLaren Vale is an hour to the South. South Australia produces more than half of all Australian wine. It is hard to go anywhere around town without seeing, hearing or reading something about wine. Fortunately, as a student, most of the wine can be had at less than $20/bottle (and its about 100x better than Yellow Tail). At the moment, I'm hearing that the wine industry is not doing so well here.

While I'm on the topic of beverages, Australians seem to love their hot beverages. It can be 40 degrees Celsius outside (more on the warm weather to come) and they will continue offering you a glass of coffee or tea all day long. Being from the South, you might think that they might like a little glass of iced tea to cool off, but not so.

Our first formal introduction to the wine industry in South Australia was through our Carnegie Mellon tour into "The Hills." As promised, I have included a picture of our tour guide below.

We learned that German immigrants introduced winemaking to Australia in the mid 19th Century. Our first and only winemaking stop of "The Hills" tour landed us at the Kies family winery, which has been entrenched in the region since 1857. http://www.kieswines.com.au/?cat=home

Although our stop at Kies was short lived, it was there that we discovered a few of the basics:

• Almost all South Australian wineries offer a "cellar door" for free (i.e. open bar tasting)
• Wines can be shipped across the country pretty cheaply (a little different from our U.S. laws)
• Most of the wines including the moderately expensive bottles are fair game.
• It is impolite to ask for the expensive wine first!

More information on Australian wines can be found here:
http://www.wineaustralia.com.au/

Cheers!