Saturday was our day to go to the famous Barossa Valley wine region. It’s about an hour NE of Adelaide. Again we drove through lovely country, including more bush fire areas. We were headed for Bethany, the first German settlement in the Barossa. Paul Kretschmer had contacted his good friend Robert Schrapel whose family has owned Bethany Wines for 5 generations.
Rob graciously gave us over an hour of his time on a very busy day. He’d given his regular crew the Easter weekend off, so he was doing everything from the tasting room to the wine vats! (There were other people doing the tasting room as well.) He took us up a hill behind the winery and showed us the whole valley and told us the story of its settlement. Ans Englishman named Angas first came there, and then invited Silesians from Germany, Lutherans who didn’t want to comply with their duke’s order to merge all the Protestants. An interesting story. He then gave us a private tasting of their wines. We had a wonderful conversation and a great time. I had met Rob briefly in 1976 when he dropped in at Holden for three days to visit Paul Kretschmer.
Rob gave us a good lunch tip and suggestions for the rest of our day. We had a great lunch at the Tununda Bakery where we also bought the last 4 hot cross buns for our breakfasts! Then we headed for Settesfield, one of the original German settlements. On the way we went by Gnadenfrei Lutheran Church - St. Michael’s it is also called - and went in as a group of women were decorating for Easter Sunday. They were putting up way cool stuff!
Settelsfield was very interesting and very touristy. We appreciated the Jam Factory craft studios. It reminded us of the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana, where an old factory has been turned into studios and support for artists.
We then went and looked at Wolf Blass. The very famous Barossa winemaker has a virtual wine city and it was pretty impressive!
We then headed home by a wonderful road through a gorge - beautiful, and another different landscape.
We splurged for dinner at the restaurant next door. Very good.
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