#4 Road trip Australia: Wine Tasting in the Barossa Valley

Barossa Valley is an important and beautiful wine region a 60 KM from Adelaide. Barossa Valley is well known for the Riesling and Shiraz. As we are both wine lovers, and especially when it comes to red wine, we had to do a few wine tastings here.

The Barossa Valley is a compact valley, just 25km long. The best way to explore the valley is by bicycle our by car. When we were there, in the middle of the summer, it was unfortunately too hot for riding bikes so we took our car to drive from wine estate to wine estate.

The first wine tasting we did was at Peter Lehmann Wine Estate. We really liked the service here, the guy who did the wine tasting took his time, gave us a lot of information and gave us the opportunity to try all the wines we wanted. We ended up trying 10 different wines from Riesling to Shiraz and fortified wines. Peter Lehmann has some beautiful wines, our favourite was the: Valley View Road.

The second wine tasting we did was at Langmeil Winery. Although the wines were really beautiful and the staff was friendly, it didn’t felt as personal as Peter Lehmann. This wine estate get a lot of tourists and groups as the wine hop-on-hop-off bus stops here, so it was a bit busier and the wine tasting was done in groups instead of personally. Our favourite wine here was the: Orphan Bank Shiraz.

The third wine tasting we did, and also the last one for that day as we were driving (woops) was at Chateau Dorien. To be honest, from the outside it doesn’t look that good. It is a kind of fake pink chateau and we didn’t really get it why they tried to remake a Chateau. But anyway, when we walked in we were the only guests and the lady took really her time do to a tasting with us. Chateau Dorien is a small family company and only has cellar door sale. So it is not possible to get the wine anywhere else as from the wine estate itself. Their wines were okay, not the best we have tried. The ones we really liked were the fortified wines and especially the Mead. Mead is wine made from honey, I never hear of it before but it was really interesting. Especially the orange, chocolate one. As Mead is more a drink for cold days, we decided to buy white fortified wine instead of the Mead. To be honest, we forgot to take pictures at Chateau Dorien.

Slightly tipsy after all that wine, we decided to search for a place to sleep. On wiki camps we found a spot where we were allowed to park the car and sleep there (on a parking lot in Agaston). There weren’t any facilities but luckily the tourist centre in Tanunda had public showers where you can take a shower for $1 per 3 minutes. The next morning we drove to the look out point for breakfast.

After a good breakfast and a nice shower (public showers at Tanunda) we were ready to do one more wine tasting before we were leaving to the Flinders Ranges. I think we could easily spent weeks in this beautiful area tasting all the delicious wines. Definitely put it on your bucket list when you are going that direction! Anyway, the last wine tasting we did was at Thorn-Clarke Wine Estate.

So which wine estates should you go when in Barossa Valley?

All the wine estates in the Barossa Valley offers free wine tastings. Here a list of the wineries we have visit:

Thorn Clarke (Great wine and great service! Best fortified wine we have ever tasted.
Lambert Estate (Helpful staff, loved the chocolate port!)
Langmeil Winery (This winery get’s very busy with tour buses and is not as personal as the other wineries. Great wine though! A short tour daily at 1.30pm is free)
Peter Lehmann(Best service we had in the Barossa Valley! Very personal and he allowed us to try all the wines we wanted, even the premier + $100 wines)
Chateau Dorien (They have delicious Mead, a wine made from honey).