ABOVE: Wine tasting in the cellar of Seppeltsfield wines.
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matching wines in the on-site Appellation restaurant (think Coffin Bay oysters, Hutton Vale lamb and Barossa grain-fed chicken). Next morning, we skip breakfast and head for Jacob’s Creek, where executive chef Genevieve Harris has set up cooking stations and a breakfast table in the thriving kitchen garden. We sip Jacob’s Creek sparkling Reserve as we don aprons and set about our tasks: some grate kipfler potatoes for roesti while others prepare baked eggs with spinach and lachsschinken (smoked pork loin), accompanied by asparagus and tomatoes fresh from the garden. No visit to the Barossa would be complete without a visit to historic Seppeltsfield. We follow the signature avenue of palms to the 1851 winery that has just undergone a massive $3 million redevelopment which includes a new 120-seat Fino restaurant with open kitchen, alfresco and private dining areas, a new cellar door and beautifully landscaped gardens with ponds and waterfalls. We combine a Centenary Tour of the beautiful property with a Taste of Your Birth Year Tour that includes a glass of tawny port from our respective vintages. Seppeltsfield is the only winery in the world to release a 100-year-old, single-vintage port each year, its unbroken collection dating back to 1878. According to winery tourism and events manager Nicole Hodgson, it’s one of the few times people don’t lie about their age: “The older the port, the better it tastes,” she says.
E XPECT THE E XCEPTIONAL
There are currently just 14 member wineries of UWEA around Australia. Executive officer Sally Cope suggests they might restrict membership of the invitation-only consortium to a maximum of 20 wineries to keep it prestigious. Others members include Leeuwin Estate, Voyager Estate and Vasse Felix in Margaret River (WA), Fowles Wine in the Strathbogie Ranges, De Bortoli Wines in the Yarra Valley, Montalto Vineyard and Olive Grove on the Mornington Peninsula (VIC), Penfolds Magill Estate (SA), Moorilla Estate and Josef Chromy Wines (TAS) and Audrey Wilkinson in the Hunter Valley (NSW). Prices of the various experiences vary from $50 for the Taste Your Own Birth Year at Seppeltsfield to $3,990 for a Platinum Winery Experience at Leeuwin Estate, which includes a helicopter flight from Perth. Other experiences cover the full gamut of things vinous such as private tastings, long lunches with winemakers, vineyard and winery tours, fly-fishing, matching wine with game and light-aircraft and helicopter tours of wine regions. The beauty about these winery experiences is that several are offered in each region, so they can be enjoyed either one at a time or grouped together over several days to make a wonderful wine-filled holiday. Bookings are made direct through the respective wineries. The author was a guest of Ultimate Winery Experiences Australia. See www.ultimatewineryexperiences.com.au for details.