Saturday 7th January 2023
Yesterday, we’d tried to visit the Watershed Gallery only to find it was closed (despite both google maps and the gallery’s outside opening hours sign saying it should be open). So we thought we’d give it another try this morning. Alas, it was closed yet again.
We’ve got a wine tour booked for 12 noon, so have a bit of time to kill. We therefore decide to go to the picnic area near Hunter Valley gardens and have a little breakfast picnic of bread and charcuterie.
It started spitting with rain, so we went to the nearby Hunter Valley Chocolate Company. It’s mainly a big shop, but there are also informational boards telling how chocolate is made. At the back are also big windows into the factory, so you can see the chocolate being made in real life.
It was then time to head to De Iuliis Wines for our tour. We were started off with the white wines and a lovely cheeseboard, and were talked through the wines one by one. We then had a tour of the winery, which we found very interesting, and then concluded with a tasting of the red wines and the rest of our cheeseboard. It was excellent value at $45, or about £25, as non drinkers were free (and Pete was driving). We very much enjoyed the wines and bought a Shiraz to take away with us.
We then drove to Maitland Gaol, which has an entrance fee of $19 (about £10) per person. There’s an audio tour, which you listen to by downloading an app to your phone. It was a pretty interesting place to visit. Many of the structures are still in their original condition, and the audio tour really bought it to life.
After Maitland Gaol, we drove the short distance to the Hunter Morpeth Motel & Villas, our hotel for the night. After checking in and dropping off our bags, we went back to Maitland for early dinner of Chinese at Mellow Bistro. Some dishes were better than others, but overall the food was great. I loved the flavour of the filling in the xioalongbao, but they were not quite as soupy as I’d like (less liquid inside than you usually get with soup dumplings). The chicken with ginger and shallots was definitely the best dish, the chicken was ever so tender and the sauce was very flavourful. The chilli beef was good, but a little too sweet for my liking.
The Hunter Morpeth Motel & Villas has washers and dryers that are free to use, so we went back to our hotel to do some laundry before going to bed.
Emma and Pete’s Asian Adventure 