With my brother doing the
driving, it was off to the Clare valley for an overnight whirlwind trip.
This story really begins a couple of
months earlier at a cellar door in the southern Clare area. A lovely young lady, we will call her “Kim”, recommended a cellar door just on the north side of
the town to my brother. Needless to say a good time was had by all. Now
while not on my radar for the area my brother was adamant about going
there. Younger siblings do sometimes have valuable information on occasion (who knew).
As you enter the gravel drive and
pull up in front of the cellar door the impression is a family winery doing the
best they can with what they have. Now while this description sounds like just
an average winery as it turns out, the statement is true, but the results are
amazing. It turns out they had one of the highest rated Rieslings in the world
in 2003 to prove the point (current one is pretty bloody good to).
The original vineyard was purchased
by Fred Dinham (Grandfather) in 1981 and the property has been managed and
expanded on by Noel and Heather Smith ever since. Their two sons Scott and
Shane, with the support of their families, have learnt the trade over the last
20 years and are now taking the reigns of the family business into the future.
Cardinham Estate was originally founded by Fred Dinham as a single vineyard of 60 acres in 1981 now known as the Home Block. By the 1990's the whole family had started to work on the property, which now included the Stradbrooke vineyards.
The
We got to spend a fair amount of time with Noel over a two day period with Jazz the dog never too far away. Noel is a classic Aussie of an era gone by. He tells it as he sees it, and his opinions are out there for all to listen to. He tells of good times and bad and of how much work making wine is, and of the fact that in some ways the Estate should be called Chateau ANZ (bank). But you never get the feeling that he would want to be doing anything else.
I could go on and on about each
of their award wining Rieslings, their fantastic Cabernets and the unexpectedly
bold yet elegant Stradbrook Shiraz and a host of other fantastic offerings, but
the long and the sort of it is you just need to go there and taste them for
yourselves. I highly 'Recomends' you go experience their great wines and maybe if you are truly lucky,
experience the Noel factor.
Happy Wine Adventures,
Cheers,
WineWalkabout
Kiwi & Koala
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