>Whilst the weather was not perfect, especially towards the latter half of the day, the sea & vine festival was a great idea! As was hiring the car (which, incidentally, wasn’t an Hyundai Getz but a Toyota Corolla – a free upgrade, apparently – although not manual as requested, but there you are).

Our first stop was pirramimma where I shared Oysters with Candice for breakfast. Eight for $15. They’d make a great entree, and I would suggest best served with a chardonnay or something. Water wasn’t sufficient to accompany the distinct flavour of the sea (quite salty!) as I was driving. I could have had free cordial as I was Des for the day (that is designated driver, which entitled me to free drinks and desserts at some wineries), but I don’t think that would have been better than water to accompany the Oysters. Tables were laid out in the ‘Cellar’ (read warehouse), which was lined floor to ceiling with barrels of wine and some art works. Playing were a blues/jazz trio called Sky High. The singer had a voice which had production sounding qualities to it. Probably one of the best blues/jazz singers I have heard in a long while!

Our second winery of the day was Wirra Wirra. This place can best be described as hip and swanky. I felt quite under-dressed actually. It was full of young ‘trendies’, wearing over-sized shades probably from the NYC collection ($15 a pair or $20 for two) – copies of brands like Police and D&G. I enjoyed it, and I purchased a bottle of wine here too for only $15. I look forward to openning this bottle this evening given I couldn’t enjoy the wines in situ.

We also visited Middlebrook Esate, Parri Estate where I had a delicious and generous helping of Swiss ice-cream in a cone – free being Des!, Chalk Hill, which was a marquee on top of a hill (to give their wines authenticity perhaps, to be consumed on a hill)? The view from the top was nice – would have been nicer had the clouds not rolled in and then start to rain. The music here though was quite good. Again, another live jazz band. Our last stop before heading back was Font Hill where we stopped for 15 minutes to see what was on offer. Apparently as Des I could have a free meal. Turns out that this was wrong and that I was entitled to a free dessert and coffee. The dessert, a prune slice, turned out to be very good so I wasn’t too disappointed.

Enough of this talk of wine. Time to go do some tasting of my own ;p