Day 672 - Margaret River, Australia

Day 672 – 11th April 2007 +7:00 GMT

Got picked up in the morning by Cheers wine tours, they drove us into the centre of Margaret River and stopped at the river banks.

Margaret River

Here we all took seats and they started to cook us some dinner and proceeded to explain about wine tasting and the plans for the day. We had a quick feed of steak, chicken and fish then loaded into a minibus and headed to our first winery. The first place we visited was Watershed Winery, this is a large winery processing around 1200 tons of grape. The wine was very good and we bought a bottle, the grounds here are amazing and they have their own restaurant.

Watershed Winery

We then headed onto our second winery which was Red Gate, here they process around 200 tons of grape they also sell soaps and lip balms etc. Next we visited a Venison farm and got to try all different types of Venison. This persuaded Martin and I to buy some meat for the evenings meal. We headed on to our third and final winery which was Bettenays which is small winery processing only 20 tons of grape a year. The guy who owns it is slightly crazy and made everyone laugh with a few jokes, we had a good tasting session and Jill and I bought a few bottles especially liking the Chardonnay and Hot Chilli Port. Our next stop was the Margaret River Chocolate Company, this was the same as the Swan Valley chocolate factory. We helped ourselves to several samples but did not purchase anything. We got back into the minibus and then headed to the Cheese Factory, yet again we got to try many samples this time of cheese and yoghurt. We then stopped at the small village of Cowamarup here we got to look around a few boutique shops and then we made our final stop at colonial brewery.

Martin, Jill And I With Our Paddles Of Beer

Here we tried a paddle of their five beers before getting dropped back off at the resort.

We walked down to the beach and watched the sunet.

Sunset

Martin and I cooked our venison and then played some Backgammon before sleeping.