Barossa Valley: The All-Blacks are scary

About two in the morning, a noise woke me up. I rolled over. Mary Beth was sitting up in bed, MacBook open on her lap, “Deadwood” playing on the screen.

“What are you doing?”

“I can’t sleep.”

My sleepy butt rolled over and went back to sleep.

The next morning, the truth was revealed: by “can’t sleep,” Mary Beth meant to say “can’t sleep unless I watch more Deadwood.” As I slept, she had watched more episodes. A lot more episodes. The WHOLE REST OF SEASON TWO.

I was less than sympathetic when she complained about being tired the whole next day.

About 8:00, we headed out onto the street and were picked up by the bus for Groovy Grape Wine Tours. With about 15 other tourists from all over the world, the bus drove north out of the city, through the tacky middle suburbs with car lots and pawn shops (think North Burnet Rd), and quite suddenly into a very hilly, very scenic countryside with an increasing number of vineyards.

The Barossa Valley, maybe an hour north of Adelaide, is one of Australia’s biggest and best-known wine producing regions. Groovy Grape was going to escort us to four of them throughout the day, with a barbecue (’scuse us, “barbie”) lunch in the middle. The weather was ridiculously nice: cool and sunny with passing clouds.

First we swung by a little gift shop for tea and coffee, best known as the home of the 10-meter-tall World’s Largest Rocking Horse (cause they wanted to, that’s why). Stupidly, it didn’t even rock. Thumbs down. They did have parrots, though.

Then we toodled up and down the hills on the narrow two-lane roads to the first and biggest of our wineries, Jacob’s Creek. It was depressing to read the five-generation history of this native Australian winery, then find out it was today owned by the French. But the wines were good regardless.

Next was our favorite, VineCrest, a boutique winery using only on-site grapes. The sommelier (I had to ask MB about the correct title) was the most enthusiastic and well-informed, and did a good job laying out the differences between the wines and so forth. The dessert port was way too sweet for me but MB dug it. Afterwards Col, the winery’s resident border collie, chewed on my hand and showed a great enthusiasm for chasing pieces of bark that I threw.

Stop #3 featured absolutely beautiful scenery and totally forgettable wines. Maybe we were just all wined out by that point. But we did have a great barbie lunch with our Berlin-born tour guide and fellow tourists. Two that we talked to had been in-country from Canada for seven months, and just finished spending two months on a cattle station north of Alice Springs.

For the record, kangaroo is very tender and yummy. It’s the Aussie version of bison meat, I think, advertised for its lean meat and low cholesterol compared to beef. Mary Beth was long opposed to eating kangaroo for reasons of cuteness, but finally tried some and conceded that it was good.

Stop #4 was at the top of a gorgeous hill that presented a stunning vista of the Barossa Valley below. We bought a bottle of Grenache, though I had long-since lost my ability to distinguish wines by then. (Mary Beth’s got the palate.) She briefly considered giving up a nice dinner in exchange for buying a $70 bottle of wine, but finally relented and stuck with the $16 Grenache.

Then it was back to Adelaide. I’d been very much looking forward to visiting the Whispering Wall on our trip - it’s an elliptical-shaped dam in the Barossa Valley that allows you to whisper conversations to a buddy 140 meters away! - but sadly it was closed for repairs.

Upon our return we found a nice Italian place to split an entree at. I didn’t realize how dehydrated all the wine had made me until I downed half a carafe of water in one gulp. We were very pleased to receive excellent service, for once, so we left a (gasp) 20% tip for our ravioli.

One more awesome tidbit from the day: back at the hotel, we turned on the TV and watched a bit of the Rugby World Cup that was going on. The New Zealand All-Blacks were about to beat the crap out of Tonga or some other little country. But before that, they engaged in what we’ve learned is a ninety-year-old tradition: the team “haka,” or Maori chant.

The All-Blacks line up on one side of the field. The competitors, apparently required by law to be psyched out, line up on the other. And the All-Blacks engage in some seriously scary screaming, stomping, and chest-pounding. The whole affair ends with a not-so-subtle slashing motion across the throat. The opposing team, presumably, wets their pants and runs screaming for the locker room. It’s what I’d do, anyway.

Enough with the descriptions. Check the action: