Margaret River 2

We crashed at 9 last night and I slept until 7 and felt much refreshed! We had some early morning visitors first thing. We walked into the town center (around the corner) and had a nice breakfast of granola and fruit and yogurt, then made a quick stop at the IGA for spit cups, socks, and a new razor since I seem to have left mine on the ship. I keep bringing the wrong socks - I needed crew length in Pasadena, and ankle socks here. We made a huge discovery in the IGA that “pumpkin” is Australian for “squash”, so for example you would have butternut pumpkin. They don’t have the big orange things we call pumpkins. Anyway, we got back to the hotel and it was pretty much time to meet Daniel, so we threw our sandals and sunshirts and hats into our green bag that we got at Woolies in Sydney and headed out. I'd considered putting on a pair of short leggings under my pants but didn't, which turned out to have been the wrong decision.

First stop, Hamelin Bay to see the stingrays. Normally the bay is very calm and you can wade in the shallows and pet the stingrays. But there's a storm that's supposed to come in late tonight and apparently the wind from it is already stirring things up, so it was kind of wave-y. All three of us had rolled our pants up above our knees, and all three of us got wet up to mid-thigh. The rays were hard to see and certainly not pettable, but it was still cool.

Our next stop was supposed to be Flowstone Winery but they weren't open, so we went to Hamelin Bay winery instead. It was a very pretty view with undistinguished wines. We stayed there for a while admiring the view, then headed for our lunch and tour at Glenarty Road, which is both a farm and a winery. We started with a tasty sandwich outside the cellar door (cellar door is aussie for tasting room) and tasted our first three wines Our tour guide Bill, who seems to be sort of the right-hand man to the owners Ben and Sasha, told us how the history of the farm and how Ben and Sasha met, and then we walked around and saw the pigs and some of the vineyard, and then we stopped at the top of a hill and had veggies and something like labneh and three more wines and learned more about how they are farming sustainably and using their cover crops to feed the sheep and we also admired their macadamia trees. There was a family of 4 plus two kids – one maybe 6 or so, and an infant – with us on the tour and that was it. Sharla, the little girl, loved the macadamia nuts and kept trying to find ones that had dried enough to be edible. There were many interesting bits of information presented. One that I found really interesting is that after the berries have set but while they’re still hard and green and don’t taste good, they let the sheep into the vineyard and they eat all the leaves they can reach, which allows better air and sun circulation for the grapes, which the sheep won’t eat because they don’t taste good. They used to do it by hand but it was very time consuming – the sheep can do it in a day. It makes the vines look very neatly manicured, as they’re all trimmed to the same convenient-for-sheep-to-eat height.

We continued on around to see the sheep, who are a heritage breed that naturally shed their coats so they don’t need to be sheared – another example of the way they are keeping things less labor-intensive. Past the sheep we stopped at the platform where Ben and Sasha got married, and had some delicious house made charcuterie (from their own pigs) and local cheese and also some perfect and three more wines. On the walk back we got talking about huntsman spiders, the third deadliest spider in Australia. They are about the size of a man’s hand and completely non-venomous. In fact they are quite friendly and if one is on a table, say, you can wave your pointer and index finger at it and it will pick up two of its legs and wave back at you. So why so deadly, you might ask? It seems they have a habit of climbing into cars and hanging out on the back of the sun visor, so when the sun is in your eyes you reach up to put down your visor and a giant, hand sized spider falls in your lap, and then you crash into something and die. Daniel our guide says it’s true. The wines at Glenarty Road were all interesting and tasty, especially the pet nat, the fiano, and the semillon. One thing that was funny is that they have three levels of wine – the standards, the unusual, and the entry level – exactly the way we have at David Hill. Their entry level wines are called Farmhouse White and Farmhouse Red, just like home. Back to our table outside the cellar door for one last wine, a fortified mildly sweet Sauv Blanc. We tried it plain, then added a squeeze of lemon, then added some tonic water. I liked the final mix a lot. We got the recipe for the focaccia and then hopped in the van to our last winery of the day, Leeuwin Estates.

We’d had a Leeuwin wine before; when Dave was teaching his Chardonnays of the world class one of them was a Leeuwin, and I thought I remembered not liking it very much. But it turned out these were the best wines we’ve tasted so far and I liked the Chard very much, and we both especially liked the artist series Cabernet Sauvignon. Our pourer was busy but very good, and when Dave told him about the Chard he got very excited and poured us a few extra things. A new group came in next to us and it turned out they were from Bend, which was very small-worldy.

At this point we were wined out so we went back to the beach, this time Daniel’s favorite beach, Redgate. It had lots of interesting rocks as well as good swimming and surfing beaches, and we had a nice time walking along. It had very fine firm sand, quite different from the beach we went to yesterday. We stopped back at our room to grab jackets, and then Daniel dropped us off at The River, a nice pub-like place. We ordered too much food but very much enjoyed the roast eggplant and the spicy lentil cakes. We also had fish tacos, where the taco part wasn’t much but the fried fish inside was maybe the best deep fried fish I’ve ever had. We walked back to the hotel, and then had a quiet evening. The weather was beautiful all day, but it’s supposed to start raining tonight and rain for the remainder of our visit, so it’s nice we had a lot of outdoor time today.

Macadamia Nuts

Fiano (left) and Vermentino Grapes. 

This is a sparkling wine which is aged for a year in the ocean. The bottles get rolled around by the current, constantly stirring the lees and aging it more quickly. They scrape the corals and barnacles off. We didn't get to try any.