Adelaide and the Yoda of Wine

We spent two days in Adelaide, which is a quiet city near some of Australia's best wine country. To start with let us commend the hotel -- the Sebel Playford. It was really a wonderful gem of a hotel to stay at. The staff were friendly and helpful, the breakfast buffet was sumptuous, it was centrally located, and they gave us a nice upgrade to a better room. Who could ask for anything more?

Adelaide itself is set out on a grid. The northernmost street is North Terrace. No points for guessing what the East, West, and South-most streets are called. Notably, however, on the outside of the 4 terraces it is all parkland -- so the city sits neatly inside a protected green space. Makes it a small, but pleasant place.

On the first day we went walking (despite the poor weather) and had some fun at a couple of the museums. We saw some good Australian art (both native and settler) at the South Australia art gallery and a fine exhibit on Aboriginal culture at the South Australia natural history museum. The day ended with a pleasant dinner in the parklands overlooking a lake, where Katy had barramundi and Paul ate kangaroo for the first time.

But the highlight of the time in Adelaide was, of course, the wine country. On the second day we went to the McLaren Vale. There are some fantastic boutique wineries there. So much so that we bought 3 bottles for suit case imports to the States from Kay Brothers, Samuel's Gorge and Perritinga.

But the highlight of the trip, sure, was our lunch at the d'Arenberg winery. Besides the fact that the food was quite good and the tasting flight of their best wines a great accompaniment, the bonus attraction was the man at the next table -- Barry d'Arenberg, third-generation wine maker. We actually had met him 8 years ago when he came to DC and hosted a wine tasting at Blackie's House of Beef, that we remember as one of the best wine tastings we've ever gone to. And there he was at the table next to us. He's retired now and his son Chester runs the business -- but he is still on site. We sort of think of him as a "Yoda" of wine making -- you can almost hear him saying "trust the grapes Luke" or something like that -- because they make really, really good wine there!

And so, we told him how much we liked his wine and asked him to take a picture with us, which he graciously did. Later, as we left, we saw him tooling around on a tractor cutting the grass -- a real "regular" guy. Since going to d'Arenberg was one of the plans for the day, meeting Barry just put a cherry on top!