Margaret River, Day 2

Started off yesterday at a little more reasonable time than the day before, getting up about 8, cooking eggs at the hostel, and hitting the road about 9:30. Margaret River is known above everything else as wine country, so of course we weren't going to leave without sampling a bit of that. There's I think something like 80 official wineries in the area, so we had plenty of options. Taking a tip we decided to first visit Leeuwin Estates, which is located pretty close to where we stayed and was easy to find, plus offered a couple of wines that were named best in Australia by some American magazine (which I guess makes it pretty legit).


The estate itself was totally beautiful, as you can see in the picture above. As none of us knew anything really about wine, we relied heavily on the tasting guides, who were all very informative and eager to guides us noobs through the process. I don't have too discriminating or refined a palate, so I enjoyed almost all the wines we sampled yesterday.

After Leeuwin, we went to the next winery up the road (seriously, there's enough of them down there you could keep yourself busy for a month just tasting wine and not visit the same place twice), called Voyager Estates. The grounds here were even prettier, with rolling hills, eucalyptus trees, and some gardens that would have been really nice except none of the roses were in bloom. We did the requisite wine tasting there (yes, we did have a designated driver - thanks, Noam), and I liked the wines a little more than at Leeuwin. Actually bought a bottle of chenin blanc, which I'm planning to share on Thursday when our friend Stevie is hosting a wine-and-cheese party.


We just had sandwiches for lunch, but we had a ways to drive to get to our next destination and we needed gas, so we headed for the nearest settlement, the little hamlet of Gracetown, which was located next to this incredible beach we took an impromptu stop at:


After the beach, we hit one more winery (also very nice, although not too unique), and then went to the famous Margaret River chocolate factory. This was actually a little disappointing; we were expecting Willy Wonka and all they had was one window where you could look in at chocolate being made, without any explanation or person to answer questions:


There was, however, a sizable shop filled with just about every chocolate confection or chocolate-themed foodstuff/personal hygiene product you can imagine. As tempting as it was to buy one or two of everything, I limited myself to a dark chocolate bar and a rocky road bar, both of which I have yet to actually dig into. They also had a little cafe, and I think everyone got the chocolate brownie with a scoop of ice cream, which was indescribably good.

Our next stop was the local cheese factory, which again had no tour or anything but did have some tasty free samples and a shop, where we split the cost of some brie and crackers and ate it out in the sun. We had one last stop after that, the Bootleg Brewery, which is a very scenic local brewery located in the middle of some pastureland (there were literally cows next door) next to a small pond. Noam, Matt, and I split the sampler tray, which was a great way to wind down an awesome weekend. Not too much more to say about our time in Margaret River, other than that I won the country game in the car on the way home (everyone goes around naming countries of the world until you can't think of one in a 30-second slot). Hooray for useless knowledge!