This year we had arranged a wine tour in the Yarra Valley for the Anzac Day public holiday Monday with Claus and Ane; the reason being that they are going back to Denmark in a few weeks, and they had yet to experience a wine tour even though they've been in Melbourne for almost 3 years! So we convinced them that they couldn't go back to Denmark without a wine tasting day in Yarra Valley.
Yarra Valley in Autumn colours
Bimse Tours had as per usual planned an itinerary (and checked that participating wineries were open for the day) of 6 wineries we were visiting. As we (Kasper & Yasmin) have been to Yarra Valley quite a few times, we tried to include a few wineries we had not visited before to make it a little interesting for us as well.
1st stop of the day was at Five Oaks Winery, which is a little family owned place close to Seville. It was one of the new wineries we had picked out for the day. 
They specialise in red Cab Sav wines (aussie slang for Cabernet Sauvignon), but I really liked their white Riesling, which was very fresh and lemony.
2nd stop for the day was Elmswood Estate, which we have visited many times before, just 5 minutes up the road. There is a fantastic view over the wines, and their wines are pretty amazing, especially their Pinot Noir and their sparkling Pinot Noir (sorry couldn't find link).
Enjoying the views at Elmswood Estate
The sparkling tasted so good that I momentarily forgot all about being the chauffeur for the day and swallowed the juice instead of spitting out!! ;-) Ups.
Wines at Elmswood
After Elmswood, we had a good 1/2 hour drive to our next stop, Rochford Winery - the 2nd new winery we were testing out for the day, which was also our lunch stop for the day. Rochford is one of the bigger wineries with both a cafe, a restaurant and a cellar door. As it is one of the bigger wineries, this is where a lot of groups come through as well, so the winery was very busy!
Their wines were generally disappointing, but their Rochford Latitude Chardonnay was pretty good with a smooth stone fruit and fig flavour to it. Mmmmm, love figs!
For lunch we shared two of their tasting platters, the cheese and antipasto, and they were both very nice with some good produce. However, their main meals were quite boring, and waiting time ended up being an hour before our mains arrived. Not happy. So we decided not to visit here again...
Next stop was just 5 minutes away, Domaine Chandon, which is also one of the bigger wineries in the Yarra Valley. Domaine Chandon specialise in sparkling Shiraz, which was the main wine we wanted to taste, however when we arrived the tasting bar was swamped with people, and we would have had to queue up for at least 1/2 hour to taste anything, so we decided to leave again without doing any tasting
:-(
Views at Domaine Chandon
Our 5th stop of the day was Balgownie Estate. We were really looking forward to this winery, as they had they best wines back when we visited in September 2008. However, we were quite disappointed this time around, as all their wines seemed to lack any real oumph!
Wine tasting at Balgownie Estate
The best of their wines was the Bendigo Shiraz. We also tried to get a coffee in their restaurant, but because they had just had an order of 20 coffees, we were told it would be a 15 minute wait... WHAT? The restaurant was not even 1/10 full -- imagine if it was full :-o Needless to say, we moved on without the afternoon coffee.
Our last stop of the day was De Bortoli Winery. It is always a pleasure to visit here. They have magnificent wines and the winery and view around are beautiful. As it was our last visit of the day, and the taste buds had already been through quite a workout, we only tasted a few of their wines. Claus decided to try all their dessert wines, and could not stop raving about Noble One, which is pretty amazing. As usual, I stocked up on my favourite sparkling -- the Emery Pink Moscato, yum.
After a successful last stop, we decided to have our afternoon coffee break in Yarra Glen at a small cafe before heading back to Melbourne. All in all a great day in the Yarra Valley, and I am sure Claus and Ane are happy they got to experience a wine tasting tour before they head back to Denmark. I certainly think they were inspired to do something similar in France or Italy when they are back in Europe...
Yesterday was my Birthday :-)Thank you all for the birthday wishes, emails, sms's, postings on facebook, etc.My big birthday present this year was a brand new golf set from Kasper, so now we can really get going with the golf...
Here I am with the new golf set :-)We will probably go on the weekend and try it out, which will be fun! Kasper also got a golf set for himself.The weather was not the best in Melbourne yesterday, a bit cloudy and "only" 18 degrees, but it cleared up in the evening, and today (Friday) it is nice and sunny and 25 degrees :-) And it will be like this for the next 3-4 days, so perfect golf weather!!The 
dogs also joined in celebrating "mum's" birthday;
In the evening, we celebrated my birthday with a romantic dinner at Sanctuary Lakes Golf Club (Restaurant), see link, to keep the birthday theme of "golf" :-)
I had a wonderful dinner of Morton Bay Bugs & King Prawns with potato mash and asparagus, and Kasper has a Steak and Shiraz dinner; fantastic food and also good service (which is difficult to find)...So all in all a wonderful birthday!
As it is getting colder, the weather in autumn in Melbourne is perfect for some garden projects (no hot sun to burn off new plants).When we moved into the house, the garden was shocking -- weeds everywhere, many dead plants, dead lawn, etc. We have tried over the past year to get the lawn going, but it has been pretty impossible due to all the weeds growing over the grass, effective strangling the grass.Recently, when we had an inspection and a renewal of our rental contract, we asked the owner if we could dig up the old "lawn" and try to plant a new one, and she was happy with that and said "Go for it!". So during the Easter break, we started "project new lawn".First step was to kill off all the weeds; this is the weeds - slowly dying:
Second step was to dig up the dead weeds, and prepare the soil for planting the grass. Kasper's philosophy was to try this on part of the garden -- meaning a corner of 2 x 4 meters -- to see if it works before we do it in the entire garden. I wonder if this "philosophy" is really an aversion to the hard work of digging up the weeds... ;-)Anyway, the result so far is looking good, as the grass is coming up nicely in the corner we planted, so will probably get cracking on the rest of the garden over the next few weeks so we can get a nice lawn for next spring/summer :-)Result so far: grass starting to come up;
Will keep you posted on the progress ;-)
This year we have decided to be charitable, and Kasper is always good at researching worthwhile causes, and found an organisation called Kiva that provide help to the less fortunate in the form of loans to poor entrepreneurs, who cannot obtain loans from banks or other institutions. Kiva's mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty, for more information check the website: Kiva
We have decided to give a loan of $25 every month to help different entrepreneurs. So in March we started the joy of giving... So far, we have given loans to help farmers in the Philippines - one loan to a vegetable farmer, and another loan to a pig farmer.
The last week, Coco has been very keen to get out in the garden at night because she has a new friend to play with - the little frog. She looks very funny when she is playing with / chasing the frog, so I recorded a bit of footage yesterday :-)
In this video, you can actually see the little frog jump around a couple of times.
I was going to post another video, but it takes quite some time to upload, so I will do that another time.
Enjoying the views at Elmswood Estate
For lunch we shared two of their tasting platters, the cheese and antipasto, and they were both very nice with some good produce. However, their main meals were quite boring, and waiting time ended up being an hour before our mains arrived. Not happy. So we decided not to visit here again...
:-(
