We’ve turned north around the south west corner of Australia and immediately noticed a 10 degree increase of temperature. Like Esperance, the Dutch and French were poking around here during the Age of Exploration, but no one took the next step to actually establish any settlements. During the Napoleon wars the English didn’t leave that to chance.
Busselton is an extended suburb of Perth. That may not be the right word, as it is about 140 miles (220 km) from Perth, but it’s where people escape the “big city” and build vacation homes. To salute that, today I am visiting a winery and chocolate factory. Yum.
Side note: You’ll find a lot of “<blah blah> <adjective> <adjective> in the Southern Hemisphere” in Australia and New Zealand. Example – Busselton has a jetty (pier) that at 1.8km in length is “longest timber-piled jetty in the Southern Hemisphere.” I’ve seen “highest tower”, “ranch with most sheep” and so on. Maybe it’s just a tour guide thing. Never mind.
It was about a 45 minute bus to the brewery, and I thought the neighborhoods we drove thru looked like Virginia Beach, or other vacation-type towns. Sandy soil, lots of home construction, changing property zoning. This used to be cattle ranches until someone realized you can grow quality grapes here. The first winery started in the 1960s.
But first, beer. Cheeky Monkey set up between several wineries and they complained about the possibility of cross-contamination of the beer yeast with their wine variety. I don’t know how that ended, but they offered several to taste.
They also brew a ginger beer. I did not know that was in the sampling, so I already had a glass on the side (I discovered ginger beer years ago – think turbo ginger ale). What I did not know is ginger beer could be alcoholic – theirs was 3%. Let’s just say I made sure to eat food after that.
I did discover something new: Passionfruit Butter. Huh.
On the way to the Margaret River Chocolate Factory we passed some sculpture. Seems a previous owner immortalized an image of her when she was into swimming and diving into a statues at the winery. After some lawsuits the council allowed it to stay. In true Aussie fashion, the locals call it “The Chick on the Stick.”
The chocolate factory was ready for Easter. I grabbed a sandwich for my alcoholic ginger beer issue. Ok, I bought some candy as well.
Aravina Estate does not make the most celebrated wine, but they have lovely grounds – a wedding was going on as we arrived. Because of that I did not get to take pictures of the grounds myself. Take a look at their website. While there we tasted five bottles. The bottom four are priced at $18 USD while the sparkling was $30. I appreciate a company that knows their market. Aravina is not making masterpiece legendary liquor, but grocery store wine. If forced to pick – I liked the Rose the most.
We returned to the “longest” jetty and were dropped off at the visitor’s center. I liked this sign:
