12:00a.m. 28th August 2008

| Travis Schultz

Vineyards, cellar doors, wineries and spectacular landscapes create a feast for the senses during the Tour Down Under in South Australia.

“You didn’t really go to ride, did you?” And with that one, seemingly innocuous question from the good wife TC, I knew that my cover had been blown.

When TC presented me with a birthday present consisting of a trip to Adelaide for the 2008 Tour Down Under, it didn’t take long for a bit of “vinicultural research” to be quietly included in my unwritten itinerary.

Another 15 members of the Sunshine Coast Cycling Club were also making the trip to Adelaide for the inaugural Pro-Tour event but had taken a somewhat myopic approach to their agendas.

My preparation for a week of long rides, in potentially hot weather through sometimes mountainous terrain, was less than ideal.

While the rest of the club members had been putting in training of over 300km a week for the three months leading up to the event, I’d been overseas and off the bike completely and was in far from any semblance of peak physical fitness.

Fortunately my liver had done the hard yards over the festive season and was well-conditioned for a week “cycling” through some of the world’s best wine regions.

My legs appreciated the fact that my roommate (read “accomplice”) Sean Campbell was happy with my plan to ride in the mornings and then take it in turns to drive the van (and use the spittoon) on our own self-directed tour of Adelaide’s surrounds. Bring it on.

Stage one of the Pro-Tour was a race of 129km starting at Mawson Lakes near Port Adelaide and finishing at Angaston in the Barossa Valley.

I don’t know how the pro cyclists could concentrate in a race through the vineyards and picturesque townships like Tanunda and Nuriootpa where the German (Lutheran) heritage is as obvious as the Prussian-style inns and their “beirgartens” in the main streets.

Once the race had been run and won, our attention quickly focused on the Barossa wineries where the premier grape is shiraz. I’ve always been a great fan of the Charles Melton Nine Popes Grenache Shiraz Mourvedre (GSM) and the Turkey Flat Shiraz, but I think I may have found a new favourite in the Langmeil Freedom Shiraz. Not cheap at about $100 a bottle, but to my palate, is better than Grange. For the white drinkers, the Barossa, being part of the Eden Valley, also does an excellent riesling – not the least of which is the Grant Burge Thorne Riesling.

Day two of the tour saw the peloton travelling 148km through the Adelaide Hills from Stirling to Hahndorf. The region is less than 30 minutes from Adelaide City and home to dozens of decent wineries, which all seem to do a sauvignon blanc particularly well. The climate is a little cooler in the Hills (it was 12 degrees that morning in the third week of January) and the casualties seem to be the reds which (with exception of the Pinot) were not in the same league as the Barossa reds we had sampled the previous day.

Hahndorf Hill is a winery worth visiting and, for hungry cyclists, The Lane has an excellent restaurant, which enjoys panoramic views of the valley.

The third stage of the tour (day five for us) sent the pros 139km from Unley to Victor Harbor on the Fleurieu Peninsula. I couldn’t tell you what the race finish was like as we never made it that far. Only 40km into the stage is the magnificent McLaren Vale which, with its fertile vineyards, sits like an island of green against the contrasting brown surrounds.

The McLaren Vale is home to 76 cellar doors, which are also famous for their shiraz, but supported by other varietals such as grenache, cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay. We tried to avoid the big-name wineries whose wine can be found at the local bottle-o and found a couple of outstanding shiraz at Fox Creek – Short Row Shiraz and Penny’s Hill and Mr Riggs McLaren Vale Shiraz. These can be found at larger or boutique cellar outlets and are definitely worth searching for.

Day four of the pro-tour covered 134km from Mannum to Strathalbyn, east of Adelaide. As it passed through much of the same Adelaide Hills terrain that we had previously seen, I made the executive decision as designated driver to skip the race and take us on a drive to the Clare Valley, where I knew Australia’s best rieslings would await us.

The Clare Valley is about 90 minutes from Adelaide and isn’t particularly scenic until you reach the Clare where you drive through the stone villages and expect to see bullock-drays carting produce and draught horses pulling the ploughs for the early Austro-Hungarian Jesuit settlers.

It’s easy to understand why celebrity chef Jamie Oliver served a Clare riesling at Brad Pitt’s birthday party in 2004 – we didn’t find a Clare riesling that wasn’t good. My favourite is the Taylors St Andrews Riesling, which is available at most decent bottleshops.

After six stages of the pro-tour, the Ochre winner’s jersey was handed to German cyclist Andre Greipel and 16 leg-weary Sunshine Coasters boarded a Qantas flight to Brisbane. I felt confident that the wife had interpreted my re-counting of our daily rides as the ramblings of a wanna-be athlete with an interest in improving physical fitness.

So when I arrived home from work a week later to be confronted by her suggestion that I didn’t go to Adelaide to ride, the best this lawyer could retort with was to query, “What makes you say that?”

“The 18 cartons of wine that arrived today from 14 different wineries. They’re downstairs!”

Oops.