Tuesday 20th December 2022
We wanted to explore one of the wine regions near Adelaide and Hanhdorf in the Adelaide Hills seemed the only practical option for doing via public transport. It’s about an hour on the bus, and we’d bought a day ticket from the station a couple of days ago (as it’s not possible to buy tickets on the bus itself).
Hanhdorf is a very picturesque German settlement, with a lot of independent shops and restaurants. It’s a very pleasant town to explore and walk along the main street. Our first stop was visitors centre, which had an adjoining museum and art gallery. They are both free to enter. The museum is relatively small but interesting and tells the story of the history of Hahndorf.
After visiting the museum and gallery, we walked down the high street to Somerled, a small family owned winery. Here we did one of their wine tastings, which was very informative. We tried a sparkling, a white, a rose, and a red and were talked through each one. Apparently the grapes for all the white wines and roses are all handpicked. I really liked these wines, and unusually Pete and I both agreed the rose was lovely (usually we’re not a fan of rose wines but this one was very crisp and dry)
After the tasting we ordered a half glass of wine each, along with a light lunch of some pate and anchovy straws, Pete went for the rose (which tells you something about how good it was!) I wanted to try something new so gave the Tempranillo a go. It’s not the cheapest of food, but the bread and pate were both excellent. The anchovy straws were tasty enough but for $12 (about £7), I probably wouldn’t order again.
We then headed out of town to Hahndorf Hill Winery. It’s about a 20 minute walk through beautiful countryside.
When we reached the winery we ordered one white flight and one red flight to share. Again we were taken through the wines, but here we were given much less background about the winery and vineyards than at Somerled winery. Nevertheless, the wines were lovely and we had beautiful views over the vineyards below.
It was a longer walk (of about 35 minutes) to our next winery, Shaw + Smith. Again it was a very pleasant walk through picturesque scenery.
We got a wine flight with cheeses to share. Like with Somerled there was a lot of context about the history of the winery and the wines. I was surprised by how new it was! There were also gorgeous view over the vineyards. We enjoyed the tasting so much that we ordered another flight, from their spin off company the Other Wine Co. These wines are more experimental, and we actually preferred them.
Our final winery of the day, Nepenthe Cellar Door, was just down the road. So again we walked. They had two different wine tastings on offer, so we ordered both and shared them. Again, I really enjoyed the tasting and the guy who talked us through the wines was very engaging and interesting. If we purchased a bottle of wine, the $10 tasting fee would be deducted from the price. As several of the wines we liked were only $20, it’d obviously have been foolish not to take up this offer. So we bought a red and a white to take back with us.
We’d intending on visiting Udder Delights (a cheese factory) on our way back. However the taxi ended up taking ages to arrive, drove completely the wrong way, and took us back to Hahndorf High Street. Udder Delights closes at 5pm, so now we unfortunately didn’t have time to get there before it closed. Instead, we took the bus back to Adelaide and walked back to our hotel. We took the lazy option of ordering a pizza to our room using Uber Eats.
The pizza was tasty enough, but not the best we’ve had. We did, however, very much enjoy the wine we’d bought back with us from Nepenthe Cellar Door.
Emma and Pete’s Asian Adventure 