Wine Tasting Weekend in Mudgee

The first weekend (June 3-5) in June, Kate and her brothers Ian and Pete invited their friends to join them for a weekend of wine tasting in Mudgee - which is an Aboriginal word for “nest in the hills” - about 4 hours drive outside of Sydney. It was a great weekend in a wine region known for its big, bold red wines and wineries that are largely family owned.

In the city, “hotels” are really pubs. Yet, when we arrived in Mudgee our hotel was the pub. Believe it or not, I can now claim to have slept two nights in a pub! And ironically it was called “The Oriental Hotel” or “The Ori” – I say ironic because from what I observed that weekend I was one of the few “orientals” in Mudgee.

The Oriental was an up-scale youth hostel with shared bathroom and shower facilities and no TV in the room. It was an ideal place for our group to stay, however, as we had the run of the place and open access to the veranda where we could (literally) chill out at night as it was quite cold in Mudgee at night.



The wine tour Kate’s brother Pete organised was a progressive lunch with something to eat with each wine tasting.

The first winery was also the friendliest winery and had the best views of the hills – Moothi Estate. A lovely couple had morning tea for us and opened up their 2011 Riesling, which is the first time they’ve ever produced a riesling. I loved the creativity they put into their wine label. It’s a splotch of mud (as in Mud-gee) and the ring of the bottom of a wine bottle.



The next winery was the best all-around winery – Bunnamagoo Winery - and the wines were all top quality, beautiful reds. We had Bunnamagoo wine at the pub the night we arrived and it was a great blend of different red varietals.

The Blue Wren was where we had lunch and it’s a good thing the meal was good as the service and the wines were poor. What this winery’s best known for is its white port which they served over ice with a squeeze of lime. It tasted like sweet water with lime so nothing very special about it, but I could see how it might be nice to serve at a summer party for its cool, refreshing taste.

The next winery had the most congenial host – the wine maker himself! Tim Stevens is the winemaker of Huntington Winery and he walked us through our flight of wines paired with cheese. When we arrived, the tour guide said that Tim’s very well regarded and that if we had a question – he’d have an answer!



The last stop was Mudgee Brewery where they had banana beer (there’s a “call out” to my best friend Ana) and chocolate/coffee flavored dessert beer. I didn’t do the beer tasting as I’d already moved on to a skinny flat white (non-fat, no-foam latte) and warm scone with cream and jam. Here’s everyone else giving a toast – “bums up” (Aussie version of “bottom’s up”)!



And here’s the funniest (and only) Aussie beer drinking song I’ve heard – a twist on Julie Andrew’s Sound of Music song.



On Sunday, we had a “Big Brekkie” which was huge amounts of eggs, sausages, bacon, toast, tempura veggies and roasted tomatoes and mushrooms. Then we hit the road and checked out a few more wineries.

Our first stop was Robert Stein Winery which is known for its rum cask port. Many years ago for whatever reason they ran out of the wood needed to make wine barrels so they used old rum casks to make port. Thus the port had a light flavor of rum. To this day, the winery makes port the same way and it was an amazing port, very smooth with a light rum taste.

Then we went to The Olive Nest and 1838 Wines where I learned about what’s special about extra virgin olive oil (it’s the healthiest and processed free of heat or chemicals, thus it is best used in less than a year). I bought the lime infused extra virgin olive oil which I plan to stir fry with and for dukkah which is where you dip bread into an herb seasoned extra virgin olive oil.

This FlipVideo refers to an inside joke with my brother about this US commercial we watched when we were little. The commercial was about where spaghetti comes from and the tag line was and “everybody knows spaghetti grows on trees”. At this point my brother turns to me and in all seriousness says, “I didn’t know spaghetti grew on trees” and I had a really good laugh! Tomu, I’m sorry it’s still funny even after all these years ☺



We went to Robert Oakley Winery next which is Mudgee’s oldest winery and they have many different wine labels including Craigmoor which is well known for their champagne.

Then we went to Elliot Rocke Estate which is known for its ice wine. I tried it and it was tasty, but the shiraz ice wine was even better as it had a bit of berry flavor to the sweet wine.



I did what I could for the Mudgee economy with my wine purchases:
2004 Moothi Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
2011 Moothi Estate Riesling
2004 Tim Stevens Signature Range Cab/Shiraz/Merlot Blend
Craigmoor Sparkling Pinot Noir Chardonnay
2007 Bunnamagoo Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
2009 Bunnamagoo Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz Merlot
2008 Bunnamagoo Estate Shiraz