Our Endless Summer: Wine Tasting in Hunter Valley (Australian Wine Country) and Newcastle

Pre-haircut, at The Champagne House,
Hunter Valley, NSW, AU

This weekend was a long weekend, for the Queen Mum's Birthday. We rented a car and took our first road trip in Australia. After stopping off on our kangaroo adventure (the next post) we made our was to Newcastle - not really knowing what we would find. Turns out a storm was coming so the waves were huge. We checked out the town and the beach and then spent the rest of the evening enjoying the hotel room with room service, movies and the sounds of the rain.

Sunday perked up and we drove over to Hunter Valley and began our wine tasting adventure as soon as we rolled across the Hunter Valley town line. Our first stop was the Peterson's Champagne house, where we got to experience some pink bubbly and chilled sparkling reds. Since it was food and wine weekend, we set out to check out the Scarborough family vineyard as it had Eric's cousin's family name and cheese and meats included in the tasting. Yum! That turned out to be our favorite place,as it was run by the actual family at their home and they had us sit down at a family style table and comfortably make our way through their wine flight. That evening our hotel hosted a steak and wine pairing tasting by the fire which was tasty and informative. I learned there is quite a difference in flavor between angus and grass fed beef (and that I don't like angus)

Monday we had an amazing brunch back at the Champagne House, checked out a couple other places, went on a search for a smoke house that made the pate we sampled at the Scarborough Winery, and eventually made our way to the windy back road that would take on the scenic route back to Sydney. Over all, it's just about a two hour drive from Sydney to Hunter Valley, but we took much longer going both directions.

Click here to check out all our photos of the Newcastle and Hunter Valley adventure.