Aussiecans About Town

Friday's Post:

Our night last night ended about 1am so our morning began a bit later today around 8:45. We showered, and skipped up the stairs to find Mrs. Tyler in the kitchen ready for some French press coffee to start our day. We are really enjoying having the time to sit and chat but decided we would remember to have some breakfast today. We treated ourselves to some muesli as Tony made his way over to pick us up. He bought some beautiful purple flowers that matched our purple outfits this morning, really brightening up the rainy day. As we chatted about our dinner last night and busting out the Webster’s, Mrs. Tyler tried to pull a bit of trivia on us – “what is a sifleur?” Anyone? Anyone? Well if you whistle a happy tune and it is even the slightest bit recognizable, then you may be a sifleur, or a whistler.

We jumped in the coral sea colored car and cruised through Adelaide passing by some lush views of green hillsides and views that stretched out to the ocean! In Australia the winter time is actually the time where the most greenery comes out while the summer is more of a desert climate. We pulled into headquarters and had the master tour thanks to Tony. We started with strolling through the extensive gardens full of herbs, avocado plants, carrots, beets, onions, garlic and the list goes on. Tony made us try a slice of lemon from their lemon tree, can’t believe he suckered us into it. The headquarters are now two buildings from the 1860’s so it has that historic feel when you walk in. The ground shifts during the seasons so they have to patch up some cracks in the walls every few years. The first room we walked into we were met by Paul and Mark. Mark calls himself an Aussiecan since he has dual citizenship. He totally understands us Americans and our love for pumpkin pie and fireworks on 4th of July so he invited us over for some lunch to play some Souza and spark some sprinklers. The recently bought the house next door and have a mighty fine lecture room coming along that I think would be excellently dualed as a dance floor…right Rob? J We met up with Ryan, Mr. Tyler, Rob Tyler, Mark, and Paul, and found that indeed they do some work in the beautiful setting of Clarendon.

From there we were onto the next part of the day, wine tasting! Ryan joined us, he seems to have an appreciation for wine too. Our first stop at the Chapel Hill there was a bunch of friendly Aussie’s with one girl that knew her stuff! She gave us all the suggestions and we got started with a peppery red. There were a few grapes I was unfamiliar with such as the temperilla, nicknamed tempremental wine which turned out to be pretty tasty in some places. We got the granache, a Spanish grape that has been growing here for a while now that has a pretty smooth feel on the palate. It would have tasted savory with a piece of chocolate ganache, which is what is what I also kept calling that type of wine. We tried at least 5 different types at each winery and some of these are pretty ample samplings! The second place there was a talkative woman who served us our tastings sharing her knowledge about the various grapes and joining in on our creative thoughts on describing the wines. When in doubt say, “mmm raspberries.” At Samuel’s Gorge there are no small tastings of wine but rather a good fourth of a glass tastings! Initially we were thinking 5 wineries but by the second we were rethinking and thought one more might just top us all off! Our last stop was Rosemount where we found ourselves laughing and really soaking up the flavors of the wines. We strolled around and viewed some artwork displayed along the barrels and even had a sip of port. Basically, wine was our tasty lunch and we headed back to the Tylers’ for a nice Sabbath meal which more than satisfied these two travelers.

Bethany, Brian their son Ben along with Paul were already at the house with the smell of lamb emanating throughout the house. We had excellent conversation and cuisine and it was a true feast of friends. At the end of the night Mr. Tyler showed us the rocket joke with the tea bag and after a few attempts we saw a really amazing occurrence. Just ask us and we’ll try to show you the joke in person J Tomorrow we get to meet everyone at church services and hopefully get a catch up on some of our rest.