Wine and Caves

For Labor Day in Victoria we decided to take a road trip, deciding that it was time for another wine country trip. After a bit of thinking we landed on Coonawarra (known for Cabernet Sauvignon), on the border of Victoria and South Australia, and found an added bonus in another World Heritage site in the region. Josh was able to take an extra day off work, which gave us a four-day weekend to travel, relax and explore.

We headed out of Melbourne on Friday and the 5.5hr journey went by surprisingly quickly, especially once we turned off the main road and left the traffic behind. We had chosen accommodation near the township of Coonawarra (thinking that would be the center of the region given the name) and were surprised as it was a lot less developed and smaller than any other wine region we've been to in Australia. In fact the nearby town of Penola was much bigger than the three houses, one general store and one closed cafe of Coonawarra. We went back to Penola for groceries, shopping and dinners and got to know the little town fairly well. Saturday we started out on the right foot with a great run around the vineyards followed by a light breakfast and then on to the wineries! We'd planned our itinerary the night before, picking places that we hadn't heard of and the plan worked perfectly. Since Coonawara is known for Cabernet we made a point of trying everyone's Cabs and did have success in finding a few good ones for a reasonable price. We also found a couple very nice white wines as well as a rose so we felt like it was very successful day of tasting. With inspiration from a fantastic lunch, we created our own fruit and cheese platter entre to go with some steaks on the barbie back at our cottage. Josh hasn't perfected his 'no-lid' grilling technique but the steaks came out pretty good anyway. To complete the night-in, we watched the movie 'Once' and were very impressed by the music and story it portrayed. We even ended up watching all of the extras just to catch more of the music and learn more about the people involved. If you haven't seen it, we highly recommend it as a great movie about friendship.

On Sunday, we headed the other direction up the highway to the Naracoorte Caves - visiting three different caves and learning quite a lot about bats and prehistoric creatures now found as fossils. Both of us really enjoyed Victoria Fossil Cave, as we got to see full skeletons of a couple of the animals that have been discovered and also got to see an excavation in progress. One of the interesting things that we were told was that even though the larger fossils may be impressive, paleontologists are actually more excited about some of the smaller finds such as layers of owl pellets also found in the cave. Though the stalactites and other cave structures were not the prime focus they were still very impressive and beautiful. Our final dinner in Coonawarra was spent at Pipers of Penola, hosted by the very capable Erika Bowen and treated by the skills of her chef partner Simon Bowen. The wine list was a great value, the food was top-notch and it definitely ended our trip on a high note. The next morning it was back to Melbourne to prepare for another week of classes and work - time sure flies when you're having fun!