Sloshed in the Valley

After arising at a decent hour for a weekend Hubby the In-laws and I made our way to the Hunter Valley for a spot of strolling around the gardens and cheese tasting.

Nah…who am I trying to kid!

Our first stop of the day (after lunch and a cuppa tea and bubbles at Petersons Champagne House) was Waverley Estates. Nothing at this vineyard is less than eight years old. MIL and I started by tasting a 1992 Shiraz, very nice. Then the 1994 Shiraz which is also called ‘bushfire in a glass’, extremely nice. Then came the 1998, which was a very good year, or so I’m told. This continued, shiraz, cab sav then the port, after nearly an hour MIL was having trouble with the slight movement of the bar (or was it her balance?). So we moved on the less intimidating surrounds of Vinden Estate.

Vinden Estate Wines has a wonderfully easy drinking wine called Alicante Boushet. It’s a red grape processed like a white grape so in the bottle it looks like a rose and drinks like pop. We had gone there with the express purpose of stocking up as we were down to the last bottle of 2004. A quick call to Trixy also revealed that he wanted some too, so we came away with twelve bottles (aka A Case). FIL was horrified, but despite being a tee-total he was quite happy to buy a hat.

We took them to a big, les boutique place next. Tempest Two has a spalling cellar door that includes three restaurants and a café. At weekends they have a Spanish guitar player that annoys the staff ‘cause he only knows six tunes. MIL purchased a couple of bottles here and seemed much happier than I’d seen her in a while. FIL and hubby had a cuppa tea and piece cake

The Cheese tasting was next and I as usual purchase a bit of each while MIL complained that she wanted a cuppa tea. We rapidly moved to a café down the road where tea was ordered along with a bowl of chips and a piece of cheese cake. I went to the shop next door and tasted more cheese and brought some candied figs to go with my cheesy purchases.

The car trip home resulted in me pretending to be asleep in the back seat and everyone else talking about stuff I didn’t really want to hear about for the forth time.

I know, I know, I’m not trying I hear you say (Hubby stop telling me to be less monosyllabic!) I try to be nice, but I can’t bear the inane conversations that we have over and over. I don’t like it when FIL asks a million questions (for the third time) about wine or cheese or anything in fact, but won’t try it. I don’t like the way MIL doesn’t get to do or see things, or doesn’t even get a look in ‘cause FIL isn’t interested, I find it tiresome to hear about hot it is when they decided to come to Aust in February despite us telling them it was the hottest time of the year. And most of all I really hate when FIL makes racist comments and then Hubby defends him ‘because he doesn’t know better’.

I do try and I’ve found out, it’s much better if I just keep my mouth shut.

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