Wine Country

I took Mark up to the Hunter Valley the other weekend, and what start as a lovely getaway ended in a disgraceful display of my up-chuck reflexes.

Anyway, our trip started off with Mark's GPS having a brain fart as we were on the F3 as it suddenly changed its mind and told us to turn off on an exit which ended up being the completely wrong one. We didn't think it was the correct one but given that we had no maps, the sign did have Cessnock and icons of grape and were placing blind faith in the GPS we figured it would get us there. After driving around the countryside for 45 minutes on dirt roads with loose stones hitting the car and no sight of any adequate signs, we figured that something was amiss. But the GPS kept giving us instructions to turn here, go straight, turn there, turn here, go up this road…which we did until it kept telling us to turn left onto a road that didn't exist. After changing the software in the GPS we eventually we found the right road and were back on track.

We stayed at the lovely Peppers Guesthouse in the Hunter Valley, right in the heart of Wine Country. Very quaint and picturesque, there was also a wedding on at the Guesthouse, which was quite romantic except I felt sorry for the guests having to swat away the masses of annoying flies.

After checking in we hit the tennis court, the pool and then the sauna. I don't understand how people can find sauna's relaxing, I was struggling to breathe. The room was huge and the bed was even bigger, they overdosed on the pillows though.

Our tour of the wineries was great, our friendly mini bus driver George drove us and two other couples around various boutique wineries. Ivanhoe, McLeish, Tower, Vinden, Carindale and the larger McGuians were the wineries we visited. The small group of us meant we got more attention by the pourers, some places were more generous than others in what they gave you and by the end of the day after a rather deadly mix of white, red, sparkling and dessert wine I was in a very happy place. I managed to carry all the bottles I bought back to the room and it was there that I lost the plot and all the alcohol hit me.

I've never been able to handle red wine and mixing it up with the other wines only worsened the impact. Poor Mark had to look after me in my drunken state. I cannot remember a good 2 or 3 hours of the evening, I used to think it was bullshit when people said they drank too much alcohol and forgot what happened but I can honestly say those few hours are completely blank to me. I do remember spending the majority of the night in bed trying to sleep and then coming to a few times to run to the bathroom and vomit. As I sat sprawled on the bathroom floor with my head over the toilet seat I had flashes back to when I was 16 and had been drinking too much Kelly's party where I swore I would never drink Midori. You'd think by 24 I'd know my limits, but no.

Ah, I am going to stay away from wine for a very, very long time.