The Swan Valley, Out & About Tours

The Swan Valley is an area just 25 minutes North of Perth, renowned for it’s excellent wine. Jenny and I went on a cruise and wine tour on Saturday. The day started at 9:30 AM as we left our house to walk down to the Barrack Street Jetty. We quickly realized we were cutting it a little too close and after a very brisk jaunt, we arrived and boarded the river cruise. Upon boarding we received a tea/coffee with a muffin, and then not even 10 minutes later we were enjoying award winning wines from the Swan Valley, as we moved up river. The cruise itself was only about 20 minutes but after about 4 or 5 small glasses of wine we were ready to begin the real wine tasting. The cruise boat holds around 100 people and about 10 of us got off while the others continued up river to enjoy a day of tasting wines on the boat. We met our tour guide, Claude a very enthusiastic, knowledgeable extrovert who had an uncanny ability to remember 16 of our names on his first try. Shortly after meeting everyone we hopped onto the tour bus and were off to visit our first winery. In total we visited 4 boutique wineries which were small and family operated but don’t let that mislead you. We enjoyed some excellent wines, and then some not so excellent wines. Jenny and I aren’t exactly winos but we are interested in learning more about wine and seeing which wines suit our palettes and which ones don’t. Throughout the day we tasted, white and red wines, rose’s, ports and dessert wines. After sampling about 20 different wines, Jenny and I discovered that we prefer white wines over red. We ended up purchasing a Chenin Blanc from the Lancaster Winery and a bottle of Autumn Harvest (White) and Autumn Red from the Windy Creek Winery. The Windy Creek Winery has the least expensive wines of any of the other wineries that are in the Swan Valley, only $10 per bottle, beats me how they stay afloat. Although the wine was much cheaper we found their white wines to be sweeter with hints of tropical fruit like passionfruit, strawberries and mango, an excellent choice for a hot day here in Oz. We had lunch at Sitello’s the third winery, and enjoyed a garden salad, with Turkish bread and dips, sliced deli meats, fruit and cheese and of course our choice of red or white wine. We spent about an hour in total there and then were off to the last winery which Jenny and I didn’t really enjoy, it was crowded and they had more samples of red wines then whites and ports which we just find too sweet. We then went to the Margaret River Chocolate factory and battled hungry chocolate loving crowds and enjoyed free spoonfuls of white, dark and milk chocolate chips and a truffle of choice. The chocolate factory specializes in truffles and had lots of different kinds, I had a cookies’n cream truffle and Jenny had a hazel nut truffle. Believe it or not but Jenny and I didn’t really feel like chocolate so we bought a chocolate milk and then the group went next door to a micro brewery. We were each allowed a small glass of beer, I chose a wheat beer and Jenny got their light beer, I ended up finishing both. All in all, we learned lots about the Swan Valley and their wines and now feel more confident ordering a glass of wine, which was the goal. We arrived home feeling good and with lots of wine in our blood stream an evening nap was exactly what the doctor ordered.