Drinking and Eating the day away with My Birthday Girl

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIRL!!!

The countryside in Margaret River is beautiful!

We decided to take a tour for my b-day,  we booked with Cellar D’Or Winery Tours run by Gerry Cunningham! An all day tour for $75. each, lunch included, picking us up at 10am and dropping us back by 5pm, what a great day, more informative and intimate than the big bus tours.  www.cellardortours.com.au

Riding around in a nice new van with only 4 other people all day in the beautiful region of Margaret River, this area has 188 wineries and is a lovely blend of green rolling fields full of cows, horses and sheep oh and Kangaroos and Emus, 100’s of them, plus grapevines everywhere!  

An excellent way to tour the vineyards and not have to drive

One of the nice things about wine tasting in this region is that its free, we never had to pay to do a wine tasting and at some of the vineyards we must of had 5-6 wines each.

A Grape Harvest

The Wild Life - Roos

When you see fields of Kangaroos and you stop and beep the horn at them they all get up and start hopping across the fields its so funny to see, I was in heaven, my kind of countryside, i could live here its that nice.

We originally decided to come down this way to visit with Sean my nephew but he had now moved up to Darwin where he is picking mangoes but Im so glad that we came here I just love it, we could stay here for a few weeks and still not see it all.  Some of the best surfing is done around here, Kelly Slater apparently was just here for a competition the week before!!

We started out with a winery called Hopps, this was a pretty little winery still run by the original family and who had a women working behind the counter who had toured Canada 10 years ago so was full of stories, she kept us all entertained so much so that we didn’t want to leave, the son here is a potter and had a gallery attached too but we didn’t have enough time to check it out unfortunately.  The wine was wonderful our favourite being the 2008 Chardonnay!  We got scooped out of there by Gerry as we were running late, oops, onto the next stop!

Our Second stop

Swooping Magpie, was our second stop, what a great name, this is an even smaller vineyard, also family run.  Best wine here was the 2008 Shiraz really nice!  Set on lovely property, a horse grazing in the field as we drove in, all the leaves changing to the fall colors, Winter is officially started here in Margaret River Area seems very odd cause its only June 1^st.

And even a Micro Brewery

Next was our lunch stop, that was arranged for us at BushShack Brewery, this is really a small brewery, with their current licence they cant even sell to the shops or wholesalers just on site and can only be open between 10am and 6pm.  Lunch was fabulous, cold cuts, cheeses, crackers and garlic bread, pate yum, we needed this to soak up the mornings wine samplings.  Then we got to taste some of their local beer, one was a mango flavoured beer, I had chocolate beer, Trev had the spelt beer but they said their best seller was the “Chilli Beer” they were all really good and it was a nice change from the wines.

A good dark Brew for lunch

Back to the wine

Then onto winery number 3 of the day, Windows, they had the most amazing photographs on display there, of the ocean, it reminded me so much of home, i loved their labels and decor, the floor was done with a concrete ground and polished finish and they had beautiful blue glass work on the front of the counters it was really well done from an interior design perspective, oh and their wine was fabulous too.  Its been a while since I have seen decor that I love!

So well presented

And Gifts Galore, im ordering one of these when I get home!!
so fun.

Onto Cape Naturaliste Vineyard, overlooking the valley is a 19^th Century stone Inn, once the staging point for coaches on the Perth to Margaret River route, the Inn provides a delightful backdrop to the vineyard.  The property became a dairy farm in the late 1900s and the old stone milking shed is now the cellar door.  The valley’s rich variety of soil types are ideal for the growing of premium wine grapes.  One thing you cant help but notice in this area is how green the green of the grass is at this time of year, there are hundreds of acres of grassland then with the changing colors of the vines its simply beautiful and you can ride around all day just soaking up the beauty.

Complete with cows

This was the driveway leading down to the Olive Oil Soap factory

Next was a visit to the Natural Olive Oil Soap Factory, this was a little gem, we drove down a beautiful long driveway lined with tall trees, their silver trunks glimmering in the afternoon sun, vineyards on one side and olive groves on the other.  This was a factory and shop set up under one roof, very well done, the story goes that this family had three children who suffered with eczema, and having been advised by Doctors not to use soap or shampoo, they were inspired to research and create a chemical free alternative that was safe for the children.  The rest is history, they moved to Margaret River where the factory in Wilyabrup is now a highlight for tourists.  Not only do they have skin products but they have a great selection of Olive Oil, original and flavoured, so good.  We spend some time and money on that stop.  Trev particularly enjoyed the soap statue of a naked womens torso, he said that bar of soap wouldn’t last long in our bathroom!

The perfect bar of soap

Jerry and our gang

The picture above was the Fermoy Estate, this was my favourite winery, not for the grounds because we didn’t have time to look round them but for the wine, i loved everyone i tasted.  We ended up buying their 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot to take as a gift to our new friends in Margaret River who have invited us to stay at their place for a couple of nights.

A happy place to be

Next and the last stop was the Margaret River Chocolate Co. Here you could go in and scoop handfuls of dairy, white and dark chocolate yum.  We ended up sampling the Nougat covered chocolate here it seems to be big in Aus, we see it everywhere so decided to try it, it was really nice, not too sweet or too hard.  Trev decided he needed a couple of chocolate bars and i picked up some more goodies for our new friends, not hard to shop in a place like this.

This is as good as it looks!

Talk about getting caught with your hand
in the cookie jar

All in all by the time we got dropped off at 5pm we were full and a little tipsy, it was a fun way to spend my birthday and to see around Margaret River, I would highly recommend this tour.  Tomorrow we go to stay with our new friends and then onto riding the Nulabor but i must confess it would be nice to see more of this area before heading out.

We all had a barrel of FUN