So, my day starts by sitting on a kerb waiting patiently for the Tour Barossa bus to take us on our wine tour, whilst Donks paces the road. I made sure I had a good brekkie of bacon, tomatoes, roomies and poached eggs (after a Donks lesson on poached egg technique) in order to line my tummy in preparation for today's onslaught!

Our bus already contains our guide, Lis; Owen from Sydney who did the tour yesterday also and Charlotte, who prefers juice to wine. In hop Donks and Queenie... To add to the already interesting blend of group members please add Hans and Xha with their gorgeous 6 year old daughter Maria. An interesting start.

Lis was fab and asked us about our individual wine choices and she planned the day as it went along. We started at Peter Lehmann wines with some bubbles (2009 Cardonnay Pinit Noir Cuvée) which was a very good start to the day. This was one of 7 wines we tasted here and I'm not going to bore you with the details but top marks go to...
• 2009 Black Queen Sparkling Shiraz, which got a ***** rating and an OMG! on my tasting notes
• 2013 Art'n'Soul Rose ***
• 2010 VSV 1885 Shiraz ***

Our next stop was Langmeil, which has some very old vines and where I tasted 8 wines. The Three Gardens Shiraz Mataro Grenache smelt like grubby old socks but tasted amazing! My faves here were...
• 2009 Sparkling Ondenc Cuvée, which had a delicious honey taste ****
• 2010 VP Vintage Shiraz ****** which we debated whether this might be suitable for bombing TimTams?!
NB not even I am sure how my scoring system works!

Our next stop was Grant Burge, which had lovely scenic views. Unfortunately our cellar door gentleman wasn't particularly helpful and rude on a couple of occasions, which somewhat spoiled the experience. I don't have any tasting notes from here but tried about 6 wines and was not overwhelmed with any. Lunch on the other hand was amazing. A shared meat/cheese platter with some Maggie Beer's pate, yummy!

After lunch we headed to Maggie's farm shop, which was very busy but full of life. There were lots of things to taste and we got some more pate (duck and sherry) for supper. By this time our group had built a rapport and Lis took a group photo of us by the pond, which was home to a number of turtles.

We were driven to Seppeltsfield and saw the palm trees that are planted around the edge of the winery. These were put in during the Great Depression to keep the workers employed! We saw the outside of their gravity winemaking building where grapes go in at the top and wind pops out downhill! Simples! They also had fields of old bush vines. All of the vines were laden with grapes and harvesting starts in the next few weeks.

Our last stop was at Tscharke's (pronounced Sharkies), a relatively new winery run by German brothers. The cellar door building was beautiful, with everything handcrafted, including an amazing light made of old wine bottles and pruning off cuts from the vines! The wines had innovative and fun names, such as Matching Socks. There were 9 wines I tasted and a number of wines that really didn't float my boat, but I did enjoy...
• 2012 House Blend, Shiraz Shiraz Shiraz ������
• 2007 Lumberjack Vintage Fortified Touriga *******
• 2013 Eva Frizzante My Fave, like liquid sorbet!

What a fun day. Who would have thought?! Having been dropped at our door we both sat out in the sun reading then had our pate of toast and washed it down with some Peter Lehmann port, starting our day as it began!