We do not live very far from the Yara Valley wine region, and although we drove through it a couple of times and had many ‘almost go that winery’ opportunities, we never actually stopped at any one. And it is number 21 on our Australia bucketlist and we still did not write a blog post about it. So when one of Oliver’s colleagues asked if there was interest to go to a food and wine festival there it did not take us long to reply.
The shortest lunch is organized to celebrate the shortest weekend of the year to ward off the winter chills. Twenty six of the small wineries open their doors and this is what happens.
Our 6 step plan to enjoying a food & wine festival
-parental approved version-
In order to enjoy a food & wine festival to the max we highly recommend following these 6 steps:
- Find a nice (other) outing for your children
- Appoint a designated driver to drive you to the different wineries, as you do want to visit multiple ones and be able to sample
- Buy a glass at $15. You can use this glass the whole day (or weekend). It allows you to sample all the wines on display at all participating wineries
- Make sure you have a solid base to be able to do all the sampling, so order food!
- Walk up to the wine tasting bar and let the sommolier explain what you are drinking. They have the knowledge (this step definitely gets harder as the day progresses and not just because of the increasing amount of people there)
- And since you are doing this in Australia, buy a good coffee at the end of the day as you want to be able to speak a language that can be understood by others when you pick up the kids again
The charm of it all is that all the wineries have a completely different atmosphere, which also translates in your taste buds. The more fire pits, the better the music and the more rustic the winery the better the wine tastes.
We ended up buying some bottles of the best tasting red and white wine, so I hope that we will taste all that atmosphere again when we open the next bottle at home.
Being back home after 10 hours I realize this has been the my longest shortest lunch ever.
A photo impressions of the day:
europe2australia.com 
Wat geweldig leuk dit meete maken.Fijn dat jullie zo genoten hebben enlekkere wijntjes uit hebben kunnen zoeken.En nu in goeie gezondheid op drinken maar.Dikke knuffelšššš
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Eine sehr gute Idee, den Winter-Blues loszuwerden oder eher: ihm ein Schnippchen zu schlagen.Geht hier in Europa nicht, weil der kĆ¼rzeste Tag hier Heilig Abend ist. Guten Schluck!
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