Yarra Valley Wine Tour

This past weekend promised to be hot and sunny, so we decided to get out of the city of Melbourne and do some travelling into the countryside. We booked to go on a Yarra Valley wine tour. This is near the area of Victoria where the terrible and tragic bush fires happened exactly one year ago. We had all been encouraged to head out to this area at some point, to help build up the tourist industry in this ravaged area once again. The day was called "Black Saturday", a commemoration of those who lost their lives, their buildings, their property, their loved ones exactly a year ago. We visited five independent wineries, each one having a story to tell. One could still see the burned out trees, evident a year later. The owners of one winery had pictures of a lovely barn and cottage on February 7, 2009 and another picture of just a blackened roof on the ground a mere day later. It was sobering, and we all had a minute of silence at 12 noon in memory. The region is very hilly and beautiful , in spite of dry drought conditions. Some of the owners explained the wine-making process to us; others let us taste the different variety of grapes that made up the different kind of wines. We were able to see the grapes on the vines ; some vines were netted to keep out the birds. We ate lunch at one winery with our small group of twelve people. Three of the others in our group were also from Canada, but from Quebec. Yet another winery had a wonderful exhibit of Aboriginal art which was an surprise addition to the wonderful wine-tasting day. Rick is planning to take a university course starting in March on Aboriginal art, so this place held an added bonus for him.