Barossa Valley is one of the top wine producing regions in the world and it is located right outside of Adelaide. The region specializes in Chardonnay and Shiraz — known as Syrah outside of the region. As part of NC State's Exchange Program, all of the students from NC State went on a wine tour this weekend. We visited four different wineries on our tour:
Tomfoolery
The first winery was small and only started in 2004, unlike some other wineries in the Barossa which have decades of experience. According to the owners, Tomfoolery Wines is focused mainly on small batch production and does not plan on expanding too much. I appreciated starting the tour with this winery because, knowing nothing about wine-making, it was helpful that the owners had time to answers our questions and tell us more about their unique fermentation process. For example, we learned that the grape skins are left on for six hours during the fermentation process when making rosé; this is what creates the pink color.
Wolf Blass
Wolf Blass was our second winery and the polar opposite of Tomfoolery. It was more commercialized and had a dedicated tasting room large enough to fit multiple groups and a gift shop. This was the only winery on the tour where the vineyards where not visible from the tasting area. Though Wolf Blass had a less personal feel, they offered a wider variety of wines to try.
Lambert Estate Winery
Lambert Estate is a modern-looking building, housing a restaurant, surrounded by acres of vineyards. The owners were an American couple. One of the most memorable wines I tasted was Lambert Estate's "The Chocolatier", a dessert wine that tasted like liquid chocolate.
Jacob's Creek
Our final stop was Jacob's Creek, similar to Wolf Blass in that it was large and popular. However, I liked Jacob's Creek better because they had a small vineyard next to their main restaurant building where each row of grapevines was labeled by what wines it produced. Visitors were able to go row by row and sample different grape varieties and taste the differences in flavor.