Monday March 13, 2006 Rain Out and a Winery Tour

Today was supposed to be a dress rehearsal for the Badge Match but it never happened. The promised break in the weather arrived with a vengeance at around 5:30 am in the form of very heavy rain. It kept raining on and off through the early morning and the event organizers canceled the days shooting at around 9:00. At loose ends now, Pat decided to go to Melbourne in the hope of seeing some of the other shooting matches while Alain and I decided to take a drive out to one of my favorite Australian wineries, Tahbilk. The oldest winery in Victoria, Tahbilk is just under a hundred kilometers from the hotel so we were there in just over an hour. We had a nice lunch at the Wetlands café and then toured the winery itself. The cellars are 140 years old, dug buy hand. The older fermenting barrels are similar vintage. I tried their Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot. The wines tasted as I remembered them from when they were available through the LDB. Full bodied and sold with the potential for improvement with age they defy the current trend of “big fruit, drink now” that characterizes so many wines today. The winery is located on a river and supports a wetland walk of about 5 km through the marsh land beside the winery. The walk took us 2 hours. In the evening we attended a civic reception at the hotel that featured dragon dancers for entertainment. All in all an enjoyable day, some photos attached. Cheers, Jim.