In the morning, Neil and his wife Annette arrived at 9am to pick me up. All we needed to do was pack the prizes and the art work and make a stop at Woolworths to pick up the food and drinks and grab some ice. Seemed simple and I was confident we would get to Burswood to where the bus was picking us up from, by 10am.
As it turned out, the morning was very stressful! Woolworths put the wrong bar codes on our platter selections and it ended up taking about 15 minutes to sort out. By then, we were under pressure to get to Burswood on time, and when we found roadworks on Albany Highway it became apparent that we would be late.
We arrived at Burswood at 10.15am and packed the bus. A head count revealed there were two people missing! It was an old work colleague and friend, Briohny, and her partner that were absent. I attempted to call her, twice, but each time it went to message bank. At this point my stress levels were really rising! I left a message saying to meet us at the first stop, Houghton Winery, because we really needed to make a move!
As it turns out, Briohny, who was almost struck by lightning the day before, forgot all about my wine tour!
Once the bus was leaving, I knew it was time to just relax and enjoy the day. We arrived at Houghton winery where a private tasting had been arranged.
The good thing about Houghton is they allowed us to taste their premium wines...in places like the Barossa in South Australia, this is normal practice, but in the Swan Valley there is more emphasis on promoting the more affordable wines due to these being the ones most people buy.
Next stop was Oakover Wines, which produce a lot of easy to drink wines. The group sat in a semi circle and enjoyed the wine tasting. The host, who had spent the early hours of the morning cleaning up the area due to flooding that occurred on Friday, had one wine covered up and guests were asked to guess what type of wine it was...I guessed correctly, it was a Cabernet Merlot.
For lunch, we stopped at Maali Park, which was suggested to me by Swan Valley Tourism! Not a good choice but fortunately the platters of mini croissants with ham and cheese, roasted chicken, lavish gourmet rolls and a meat and cheese platter made up for it.
At lunch we held two raffles, one was a $5 raffle for a stretched canvas original painting, titled 'Just a Moment'. We raised $105 for this piece and my mum actually won the prize, but gave it to Annette as a gift :)
The $1 raffle which had several prizes, went very well. We raised $110, selling 110 raffle tickets in the space of about ten minutes!
In addition to the $215 raised from the raffles, I was able to make a further $325 from proceeds of the event. That is a total of $540 raised from the wine tour, which is a great effort.
After lunch, we visited Wild Swan Distillery where some of us tasted the spirits on offer. My favourite turned out to be the chilli vodka, which had a kick but wasn't too hot! Some of the guests discovered ice cream for sale next door!
Our final stop was Sandalford Estate Winery, which was a lot of fun. Here, the host allows you to taste from the bottles till you are done! It's not a case of them putting a tiny tasting in your glass and then moving on to the next. Sandalford also arranges for cheese to be put out and the host only speaks at the start - he was really entertaining too, showing us a couple of awesome items for sale, including a port glass which has a glass straw attached, as you pour the port it comes up through the straw for you to consume. Mum bought me two of those.
As an engagement present to Brianna and Cheyne, I also shouted them a bottle of wine.
Here are some photos from the day:
To cap the day off, I went to the WACA and watched the Scorchers win the semi-final of the T20 Big Bash against Shane Warne's Melbourne Stars.
Overall, the day was a success and I'm grateful to everyone who attended and made the day possible.
Well done on organising it Murray, Cheyne and I had a great time!!
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