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McLaren Vale, SA

Fri 13 - Sun 15 Mar 1998


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Fri 13th

We left Semaphore Beach and drove to the end of the peninsula and back past the ASC Shipyard, Henley Beach and West Beach, Glenelg, Brighton, Hallets Cove, Reynella and on to the McLaren Vale Caravan Park.


Sat 14th

Joy took us to Noarlunga to pick Bigman up from the train, and then chauffered all three of us around the McLaren Vale Wineries.

We started at the Information Centre where a very nice lady who turned out to be the wife of a grape grower, suggested the best places to go in search of Shiraz.

She was obviously very knowledgable about many facets of the business and was able to answer all of my questions.

The gas guns, so obvious all around the vineyards, are necessary to scare away starlings and blackbirds which peck at grapes and leave them open to botrytis fungus, which is essential to make "sticky white" wine but which reduces the quality and therefore the price of the grapes. The are used for about two months before the grapes are picked. The are newer electronic bird scarers which are expensive but more effective coming into use. Nets are used to achieve the highest quality.

Our mission to find the best Shiraz took many kilometres, several hours, and a good deal of perseverance at the difficult task of wine tasting.

The first place we stopped, ????, was pretty unimpressive. The sales lady couldn't raise much enthusiasm for the current vintage so we pressed on.

The second place, ????, was a group selling outlet which seemed more interested in selling jewelry than wine.

At the Chapel Hill Winery, we sampled several wines and bought some pretty good shiraz.

We eventually decided that Kays Amery 1995 Block 6 was the best we could find. The vines are 106 years old and the wine has a depth and richness not evident in the other wines. We didn't buy any because it was $30 a bottle and we had spent more than was reasonable already.

At Woodstock we found that they sell "Museum" wine so Bigman bought a couple of bottles of 1986 one of which we drank for dinner. Ahhhhh!.

I bought some Botrytis Chenin Blanc "sticky white" which went down pretty well with dessert!.

We also bought some "magic" Merlot at Hardy's.

Dinner was rump steak from the local butcher which was sensational, even before the Shiraz.


Sun 15th

We had researched the various ways of getting to the WOMAD site last night. Instead of the one kilometre walk we had expected, we were able to cut through the creek between the caravan park and the site and walk right round outside the fence to get to the gate on the opposite side of the oval.

As we arrived early, we were able to settle in a comfortable position under a sun umbrella and close to wine and food but with a very good, if distant, view of the stage.

During the day and the evening we ate several kinds of African and Asian food and drank several kinds of red wine, all very good.

The performances were almost all well worth the effort. The starters were, of course, fairly pedestrian but the overall effect was of a really enjoyable twelve hours of music spanning a wide range of cultures but all incorporating the best of contemporary music. .

My Friend the Chocolate Cake, an Australian group brought together from some earlier Womadelaides for this event, played contemporary music with violin, cello and double base together with keyboards and drums and not a little help from the 100kW PA.

Circus Ethiopia is a very high energy performance of acrobatics and juggling by a sizeable troupe of young people from Ethiopia to non-stop traditional Ethiopian music with a strong, insistent beat.

Geoffrey Oryema is a refugee Ugandan who lives and works in France. His haunting music showcases his powerful tenor voice which is suitably complemented by the deepest bass voice of his accompanist. He was the highlight of the day for me.

Shooglenifty, a Scottish rock band with a strong flavour of traditional folk instruments, captured the crowd's enthusiasm with a wide range of high energy pieces.

Its strange that this is the first 12 hour concert that Jean and I have ever attended and we both enjoyed the experience very much.


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Created on Fri, 13 Mar 1998 - Last revised 25.08.2001