Australian regional road trips: McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley

With tourism down, we felt it was our patriotic duty to savour South Australia’s wine country, one stunning cellar door at a time.

The weather had rolled in grey on the great state of South Australia’s southern coast, so we mulled over our options after our names were called from the window at Port Elliot’s Yeo Haus and we collected our coffees.

The beach town of Port Elliot is beautiful no matter what, but with clouds in the sky and a strong, cool southerly, maybe this day should be the day that we looked a little wider for what the landscape had to offer.

So, out whipped the iPhone 12 Pro Max (brand new, very nice), the Google Maps app and our imaginations as we quickly realised that the Barossa Valley was just a leisurely drive in the country that was only about an hour and a half away.

Then, with just little bit of online research, we plotted the course that would take us through some of the world’s best shiraz country in McLaren Vale, then deep into some of the world’s best riesling country in Eden Valley, and then on to the deep, dark purple heart of South Australia: The Barossa Valley proper.

We connected to the car via Bluetooth, set the coordinates for our three chosen wineries and smashed play on the best possible Spotify playlists to match a cool, country drive through some of the south’s most picturesque wine country. 

Stop 1: Serafino Wines, McLaren Vale

Once we’d drained our coffees to the bottom of our cups in Port Elliot, we wheeled the car north with the sounds of our first hot playlist pick - the up and coming Sydney alt-country star, Babitha.

The smooth sliding licks of country guitar and the chorus “I think we should get out of the city… I think we should move to the ocean” seemed oddly pertinent to our predicament as we slowly wound our way through Middleton and then hit 5th gear with the turn toward Currency Creek.

It wasn’t the fastest way to get there, but it was one of the most beautiful, with the 100km an hour patch between there and Strathalbyn made the choice of a Bonnie Prince Billy album an obvious one.

Pulling into the proudly Italian-rooted Serafino, we prepared our palettes for their Premium Flight tasting range (only $39 pp, great value). Famous for taking full advantage of McLaren Vale’s perfect shiraz-producing conditions, the 5 Red Star Halliday-rated winery’s tasting flight had us walking out with a bottle of Syrah, a highly-rated GSM and a beautiful bottle of port, perfect to be paired with that night’s dessert.

Stop 2: Henschke, Keyneton Estate

From here it was a bit of a hike to our next stop on the other side of Tanunda: the wondrous Keyneton Estate, home of the illustrious Henschke winery and one of Australia’s oldest and most celebrated winemaking families, having just been awarded The World’s Most Admired Wine Brands for 2020 by Drinks International.

From here and their nearby Eden Valley vineyards they’ve produced some of the best blends, riesling and chardonnay the country has ever seen, and have been doing it consistently for six generations.

But because it was over an hour away from McLaren Vale, we decided we needed to listen to something with a narrative structure that was a little stronger than just music.

So, we dug deep and found John Sylvester’s Naked City podcast, produced by Fairfax Media and based on the veteran journo’s true crime reporting for Melbourne’s The Age newspaper.

The gritty tales of Melbourne’s gangland seemed like and odd pairing to the rolling agriculture and twisted, ancient red gums of the Fleurieu Peninsula and stunning hills just east of Adelaide, but the masterful storytelling soon matched the view by virtue of its contrast; like a sweet wine served with a sharp cheddar.

The location of the cellar door built in the 1860’s by Johann Christian Henschke (thanks, Google on the iPad) proved faithful to the myth of winemaker, with the gate only marked by a bushel of trees at the end of a winding dirt track. Google Maps had undersold the area to us… We joked they should add a feature to let us give the scenery a score out of 10 (9.5 from us on this journey).

But once inside, the top flight of tasting was the one we went for; because why do anything in halves? The structured Shiraz of the hundred-year-old hand tended vines and the world-famous Eden Valley riesling was irresistible, and even as Henschke fans from way back, it didn’t disappoint us. 

We walked out with some hard to find bottles of the state's best plonk, including a magnum of the Eden Valley riesling, as proof to our friends (and probably ourselves) that we hadn’t just dreamed the whole thing.

Stop 3: Peter Lehmann, The Barossa Valley

Hopping in the car and swapping seats again, we knew it would be tough for anyone to beat Henschke as a destination wine experience. But if anyone could do it, they would have to be in The Barossa Valley proper, and if it was anyone there, it would have to have been Peter Lehman.

So once again we punched our coordinates, pointed the car in a different direction and prepared our palates the best way we knew how, with another pick from Spotify to fill the air on the way there.

Melbourne songstress Julia Jacklin was the winner (and so were we by proxy), with her most recent album Crushing turning on the singalong juice as we wound our way into Tanunda and onto the sprawling grounds of one of the region’s most prolific winemakers.

There we discovered another top flight of fearsome Barossa Shiraz, with the difference between this winery and the others being that Peter Lehman picks his grapes from the best of the local crops, as opposed to growing them himself.

This gives him the ability to only ever use the best of the best grapes, with the results being the best of the best of the ubiquitous Barossa shiraz.

We picked our bottles, checked our steps on the Apple Watch and prepared to drive into the sunset back to the southern tip of the state. The only man for the job? The late, great, Josh Molina, AKA, Songs: Ohia.

His exceptional album Didn’t It Rain, although melancholy in parts, filled the ride with a quiet optimism as yellow hills of the Fleurieu rolled towards the setting sun, leaving 2020 in the past and bringing forward what could very well be a year as amazing as our wine haul. 

Pick a plan with enough data to handle it and add the phone, tablet and accessories to help make it the road trip of a lifetime.

With international flights suspended, now’s the time to seize your opportunity to explore our beautiful county and help support some local economies along the way.

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