Sun, Sea, and Sand-wiches: Cowra wine festival

My old school friend Toby's fiance Jenice is from the little rural town of Cowra, which is 4 hours west of Sydney, over the blue mountains. Apart from being a lush green agricultural centre, it also holds the 3rd largest wine festival in Australia. Strangely Jude and I have never been to a wine festival, so had no idea what to expect. We ended up leaving on Friday evening, and stopped of in the little village of Leura in the blue mountains for a lovely fireside dinner, which ended with Christmas pudding ice cream, which was awesome, and not surprising Jude fell in love with.

After waking to clear blue ski's we drove over the mountains and into rural Oz (where Jude saw her first ever kangaroo). Apart from the wine festival, Cowra is also know for the Second World War prison escape by Japanese prisoners, where 231 of them died after they tried to storm the prison as would rather die than live with the shame of being captured. Even the ones that did make it out committed suicide by throwing themselves under trains!

Anyway, back to nice lovely wine. Now what better way to get ready for a wine festival than go to 2 different wineries for tastings. So after about 13-15 tastings, we were ready to hit the festival. Inside we had 3 hours where we could drink as much as we liked, and serve ourselves, apart from champagne and some top top wines. Thankfully the organiser lives next to Jenice, so we had the inside scoop on the best wines. Going through the doors suddenly the excitement and pure manic of everybody hit us. It was like being at a music festival, where everyone runs around trying to see all the best acts. Our reserved approach was thrown out the window, and be decided to just dive in with everyone else, with elbows flying!

All i really remember is eating huge slabs of brie, guzzling every type of wine within the first hour, being very impresses with the grape Durif (slightly more fruity and powerful Pinot Noir, or softer Syrah).Then with only 20 mins till the end we all hit the port, and hit it hard. After being herded out, and then into the only pub in town, Jude and I thought best to call it an end as we had an earlyish start. After waiting in the freezing cold with an 18 year old girl dressed like a local in Newcastle, still no taxi appeared. Thankfully a little spotty fella comes out and says he's about to be picked up by his mum, and she'll give us all a lift home. Our neighbors would have seen a very bemused and drunk couple staggering from a strangers car, whooping that they'd found there flat. The journey home the following day was not a pleasant one!