Hunter Valley wine tourism: the good and the bad

On a recent holiday home to Australia with my boyfriend, we spent a couple of days in the Hunter Valley to introduce him to Australian countryside and get out of the city for a while.

I haven't been to the Hunter Valley for a long time, and it was fun to see how tourism, with its added touch of the appeal and sophistication of a wine producing areas, gets treated in regional NSW.

I've always been of the opinion that Australia knows how to do hospitality well, and I wasn't disappointed. We stayed at the Peppers Guest House retreat and had wonderful food at the Chez Pok restaurant, great surroundings and polite but friendly staff. The people we came across in the Hunter Valley were generally friendly but discreet and the Hunter provides plenty of the lovely countryside and peace and quiet we were looking for.

But when it came to wine tasting, I was disappointed. Firstly, all of the cellar doors are set up in such a way that wine producers fall into the trap of serving lots of wine to people who often know nothing about it, only to not make any sales.

Leaving aside discussions of responsible service of alcohol, we often found ourselves standing up at a kind up bar set-up, elbowing for room, while receiving patronising and offhand comments on the wines we were tasting.

At one producer, I find the quality of the wines impressive but difficult to determine as they were all served at room temperature - a problem when you're in the middle of the Australian summer. Another producer who has completely renovated their entire complex with highly sophisticated architecture and design, has their tasting room laid out such that there appeared to be a rugby match going on to fight for space.

Along with the extremely disappointing offer for that day (you can only taste from the list, and not choose generally from their range of wines), most of which was wine not even from the Hunter Valley, I was served by a screechy but bored woman with bright nail polish who subsequently told me that their Victorian riesling tasted just like a sauvignon blanc. Not a good comment to a customer who is undergoing sommelier training.

My advice to producers and customers would be to get to know each other, provide booked, private and guided tastings whereby the customer can really appreciate the story behind the company and quality of the wines. I would much prefer to sit down, be treated with some personal attention and really get to know a few wines, rather than scoffing many while standing in a throng of people trying to understand why one semillon is different from another. And I'd be far more likely to buy the wine too.

Photo | Flickr