April, 2023
Alluring Adelaide
Amazing to meet up with the other half of my inspiration to travel to Australia. We’ve been planning to come for 16 years, ever since Maggie Measday and her family moved in for a short stay two doors down from our house in Vancouver. South Australia has everything you need! The beach, killer wine and a lovely city. The people are pretty awesome too.
Our first landing point in South Australia! Maggie and Doug's beach house in Seaford; it's pretty sweet waking up to this every morning!
Just a girl and her (friend's) dog on the beach 🐾
And…the beach house is a short bike ride from wine country. We rode on a former railway line to McLaren Vale to do a bit of tasting. We’re in Shiraz land.
Tasting at Gemtree, a fully organic and biodynamic winery. Nice wines…not sure I believe all the biodynamic stuff about packing manure into cow horns and burying them at ascending (or was it descending) moon phases, ground up quartz mixed into the soil to let the light in and so on. Would love to do a side by side and see if there’s a difference.
Dinner at the Victory Hotel near the beach house. This is what happens when you love wine so much and you build a huge collection: you open a restaurant with an amazing cellar. No wine list for the reds. You just go to the cellar and pick up a bottle.
I think I'd like to have this table next time...
A walk down the pier at Port Noarlunga to the reef where there’s a marine reserve. Windy day so no reef snorkelling for us!
D’Arenberg Winery’s The Cube. The winery has been in the family for decades and current owner Chester Osborn definitely pushed the creative boundaries when he built The Cube. Five mixed-up levels of alternate-reality art installations, tasting room, and toilets worth a mention…a real feast for the senses. Wine’s pretty good too!
Urinals that would give little boys nightmares!
Me and my friend Ollie 🐾
The Victorian Mortlock Wing of the State Library of South Australia. Depending on which list you consult, it’s one of the 25 Most Beautiful Libraries of the World.
An immersive commission by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota called Absence Embodied filled a room at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide. Known for her string installations, this one is a giant web of 180km of red wool. A second cancer diagnosis and treatment inspired this piece. In her own words: “My body was in pieces, assembled together, but I did not feel whole. I wanted to scatter my body parts on the floor, the absence in me becomes embodied, but at the same time every single body part expresses much more emotion than my whole body could. By looking at a single contorted hand, fragmented arm or twisted foot you can feel an emotional state, a whole existence. While I was passed through the system, I felt absent from my existence, but in order to keep my existence I need to create art, I need to create Absence Embodied. Me, myself, my emotion, and the material are part of the ritual of creating art. It is not only an art piece but necessary for my life.”
Why not continue the theme from Vietnam?
I got lucky and got a green ant in my drink!
One of many cockatoos in Maggie's garden.
Maggie Beer (different Maggie) is a well-known cookbook author and cooking show personality. She refers to herself as a cook, never a chef and runs the most fantastic shop called Maggie Beer’s Farm Shop in the Barossa. Wow! The spreads, pâtés, cordials, sauces and more! We are now devoted dukkah fans and Adam intends to make it his mission to create his own line of dukkah.
Maggie Beer also had a show called The Cook and the Chef out of this very kitchen. Adam and I are still arguing about who’s the cook and who’s the chef.
Seppeltsfield Winery is known for its fortified wines…quite a selection that really pack a punch! Then we went into the Jam Factory…no jam in there. It was a fantastic artist’s cooperative.
Wine tasting…Shiraz nouveau.
Edwina!
Hanging out in the trees in Adelaide.
So we pulled up to our final cellar door (that’s what they call a tasting room here) called The Willows Vineyard. Pretty sure we came here because Maggie’s beautiful granddaughter’s name is Willow. What a find! First, we encountered a fellow lining up all these now-empty-of-handpicked-grapes buckets. We interrupted him as he was starting to give them a rinse at the end of a long day of picking. He was telling us about how they mostly hand-pick, using a team of about 18. He pointed out the various sections of the vineyard. Lovely guy. We went to sit on the veranda of the old cottage for our tasting and he got back to work. Who would have thought we were chatting with Jack Scholtz, South Australia 2023 Winemaker of the Year! A well-deserved accolade indeed! In 1845, Jack’s great, great…grandfather Johann, a Lutheran, fled religious persecution in his native Prussia and ended up farming in the Northern Barossa Valley. His expertise as a bonesetter pushed him into the medical field more so than farming and the three subsequent generations followed in his footsteps, working in the hospital Johann founded in the 1850s. By 1936, Johann’s future generations planted grapes and here sits a fantastic winery. Lovely wines in a stunning setting with a fabulous backstory. I was particularly partial to The Doctor, a sparkling Shiraz named in honour of the family’s medical roots.