Riverena wineries, it is also about drinking as it turns out!

Christmas this year was a bit strange for me, instead of the cold, wet or snow I usually get in the UK I was in a small town called Leeton, which is a 4 hour drive from Canberra, Australia's capital, having an Italian-Australian Christmas with my fiancées family (there was 14 of us on the big day!)

As a reward for being on Santa's nice list this year I got taken to visit a few of the wineries in the Riverena region of New South Wales while we were there. 65% of the wine produced in New South Wales is produced in this area and it is easy so see why as the drive from Leeton to Griffith reveal kilometre after kilometre of grape vines.

Many of the regions wine making facilities are based around Griffith, there are some impressive facilities including the one pictured where they make Yellowtail wines. Sadly there is no cellar door here so we made the short drive to another large winery which has been established in the region for a long time, the "De Bortoli" winery (http://www.debortoli.com.au) who are famed for their dessert wines (the noble one, which is a botrytis semillion and the black noble, which is a port style fortified wine) as well as doing a lot of wines that are typical for the region, specifically Chardonnay and Shiraz (as well as the semillion they use for the botrytis based dessert wine).

The second vineyard we visited is another of the original Riverena vineyards, McWilliams. This was one of those tasting that you have occasionally when things get a little out of hand. I think this usually seems to happen when there is no-one else in the tasting shop (check), you look like serious buyers (check, my fiancées parents were with us)
and the server knows what they are talking about (check, the girl serving us was 6th generation McWilliams). The final key ingredient is a great selection of wine, and they certainly had that on the cellar door.

We drank a wide variety of the Riverena wines talking about the problems they had in the area for the last couple of years with rain and the related fungal problems.

We worked our way through the whites, the stand out being a very drinkable Reisling from 2011 from the Hanwood Estate range (we left with bottles of the 2011 Chardonnay, Reisling and Pinot Gris) but it was really the 2 reds picture below that were the stars of the afternoon, both are from the McWilliams flagship range. The 2010 Maurice O'shea mount pleasant Shiraz was still a little sharp and needed to be cellared for a few years, but was quite typical of the hunter valley Shiraz wines, being a little less rich that the ones we'd tried earlier in Canberra, with a slightly more earthly taste and a peppery finish. The next bottle was the one we ended up buying, a 2008 McWilliams "1877" Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon, this is a beaut (I am adopting the lingo) of a red, deep, rich and fruity with a smooth texture which will be at its peak in 5 years time. At Around 80 AUD a bottle it is not cheap (you can buy a maximum of 12 and there are unusually not per case discounts!) but I think it will be we'll worth it in a few years time!

I then got to try the full selection of ports, sherries and brandies, the strangest one of the being a cream port, we were reliably informed this was created by accident after someone poured port into the sherry barrel, but they continue to make it after they found it tasted a lot better than you may think. Having tried a glass I would say that although it is drinkable it is something of an acquired taste, very much like you'd imagine port and cream would taste, we bought a bottle to make trifle with! McWilliams do have an excellent brandy, the chairmanship show reserve, which was a really smooth, rich easy drinking brandy.

As you can probably tell I would highly recommend this vineyard if you are in the area, especially if you are not the one driving home!