As I drove into McLaren Vale I was faced with a serious challenge: so many vineyards, so little time. McLaren Vale is one of Australia’s smaller wine regions, accounting for just three per cent of the country’s total wine production, but it has over 100 vineyards. Obviously I couldn’t visit them all.

To narrow my options, I decided to visit only vineyards that matched some of my pet interests. Like most people, I have a rather scrambled collection of interests, covering such varied topics as largest, smallest and oldest things, bells, mazes and anything humorous. Sifting through the leaflets about the various vineyards at the McLaren Vale visitor centre, I soon had my itinerary mapped out.

SMALLEST AND OLDEST

First stop was the main street of the town of McLaren Vale. I parked next to the ornamental grapevines that line the street and went into the Haselgrove cellar door shop. Haselgrove has some delicious wines to taste but also has the distinction of being McLaren Vale’s smallest cellar door.

Just down the street is a very different cellar door, and one that matches my interests very nicely: the Hardys Tintara Winery is one of the oldest in the McLaren Vale region. The site has some beautiful 19th century buildings, plus newer ones built in traditional style. There is a bust of Thomas Hardy (the winemaker, not the writer) and the cellar door has interesting displays of old Hardy wines, including Australia’s oldest vintage wine bottle from 1867.

BELLS AND VESTALS

Next stop was Wirra Wirra Vineyards with its historic church bell. This Angelus Bell weighs three-quarters of a tonne, and comes from the Jesuit church at Norwood, SA. Now it rings out the start and finish of each vintage at McLaren Vale, plus any other occasions that seem to merit bell ringing.

As a bonus, Wirra Wirra also has what could well be Australia’s biggest fence. Called Woodhenge, this fence looks like something from Greek mythology. It is basically a standard post-and-rail fence, but made from huge tree trunks – some of them 2m in diameter.

That Greek connection was a good preparation for my next stop, Hugh Hamilton Wines. The cellar door here is a round building, constructed along the lines of an old Roman temple of Vesta. They even sell Vestal Virgin olive oil, though the original acolytes of Vesta were not blessed with the same range of generous wines and panoramic views across the vineyard.

AMAZINGLY FUNNY

Hugh Hamilton Wines also satisfied another topic on my list of interests: humour everywhere. Hugh apparently sees himself as a black sheep, assuring visitors that “every family has one”. There is a statue of a black sheep standing outside the cellar door, and dips in the road to the car park are signposted as “sheep dip”.

By now I had covered everything on my list of interests, except for mazes. Amazingly I had located one of them as well, so the next stop was Maxwell Wines. As well as its range of fine wines and mead, Maxwell Wines boasts a conifer maze.

From the outside it looks like a thick clump of trees, all clipped off to the same height, but inside is a fiendishly sinuous maze weaving its way through the trees. With confusing forks in the path and many dead-ends, it will challenge and delight any maze-ophile.

My quest was complete. I had set out to find an unlikely variety of sites in McLaren Vale, found all of them, and tasted some great wines along the way. Not a bad achievement for one day.

The McLaren Vale and Fleurieu Visitor Information Centre is on Main Road at the north-western edge of the town of McLaren Vale, (08) 8323 9944,

www.mclarenvale.info

McLaren Vale Lakeside Caravan Park, Field Street, (08) 8323 9255,

www.mclarenvale.net

By Keith Hall, as featured in Caravan World issue 454, June 2008.