Rutherglen

One of the great delights of touring a wine producing country is that you are never very far from a vineyard and Bright is no exception to that rule. So yesterday we set off to explore the wine producing region of Rutherglen.

The drive there, about an hour and a half was picturesque and we chose to go through Chiltern an historic town, that looks exactly like something out of the Wild West films we used to watch in black and white. Linear development but attractive in its own right. If a town was founded in 1862 how much real history has it got? Revert to history teacher mode, what is history? The whole region was developed by gold miners when gold was discovered in the area and all around the same time, but one town can turn to another with its thumb on the end of its nose and say"Well we are two years older than you!!"
We arrived in Rutherglen, another Wild West copy, and walked up and down the street looking for the information office. We found a pub and a pie shop and a little later an information board but no office. It was only after we had walked the length of the Main Street in both directions that we suddenly saw what we had been looking for, stuck on the other side of a roundabout.
A quick visit , a charming chat about how cold it was in England, the production of a map of the area and we were on our way to Pfeiffer's winery. So far so good, unfortunately we completely missed the turn and ended up crossing the Murray river back into New South Wales. However, it was worth seeing the river. The master navigator soon got us back on the right road and we arrived at Pfeiffer's , a delightful spot on the Sunday Creek, a tributary of the Murray. Before going into taste wine we walked down to their historic bridge and looked at the long necked terrapins swimming in the creek, and were lucky enough to see and photograph a pair of kingfishers.
The wine tasting was excellent and we were regally looked after by Robyn Pfeiffer, the wife of the wine maker. Well we started out being looked after by a young man who gave up on us when four rather attractive young ladies appeared for a tasting, I did point out to him that we had noticed, but that we weren't really hurt.
As I was driving I spent the tasting spitting but Rosemarie tried seven or eight wines, some of which she liked, and we ended up buying some to take back to Pam and Mike some to take to Melbourne next week and a couple for Mary and John.
After the tasting, the official tour taster stated that she needed something to eat so we headed back into Rutherglen, where we enjoyed that national Australian delicacy, the pie. The pies were really good and after we had finished then we headed off to Stanton and Colleens for another tasting. After that one it was across the road to Campbell's where we had another tasting. It was here that we ran into a hens' party. All the young women were dressed in black apart from the bride to be who was in white, several of the group had pink sashes on indicating that they were bridesmaids or the mother of the bride and they looked wonderful sat out on the grass at picnic tables enjoying their lunch. We talked with a couple of them who came into the tasting room and one of them was a teacher who had visited Cornwall whilst she had worked in London.
At the end of this tasting Rosemarie felt the need for some sustenance and so she bought some crackers from the winery which had been made in Derbyshire. This was fully understandable, as by is time she had tasted about sixteen wines.
After Campbell's we headed off to Morris's winery where we encountered the same group again. We asked a couple if we could take their picture and ended up talking to the mother of the bride who proudly told us that her ancestors came from Cornwall and that they all came from the Redruth area.I asked her if her ancestors were miners and she proudly replied,"No criminals." It was carefully explained to me though that they were all Methodists,perhaps in some way that excused their criminality.She and a friend and arranged a holiday the year before to go to Egypt and then Cornwall, both of which they loved. It transpired that the whole group of about thirty women were going onto a pub for a meal and then back to the bride's mother's house to carry on the revelry, so we wished her the best of luck with that.
The bride then came up and told me she knew me, apparently one of her challenges was to persuade a strange man that she already knew him, so we had a laugh about that. The tasting inside the winery was a little raucous but it was still very enjoyable.
We drove home through Wandonga and down a really picturesque road back to Myrtleford. All in all a really interesting day out.