There were a few more wineries that we wanted to check out. Yalumba was first on the list and we were not disappointed. The grounds were lovely, the wine was excellent and we just happened to put our heads into the cooperage to see the cooper do his thing.

Sometimes you just get lucky. At Rockford Cellar Door we got to see the truck roll in with the newly handpicked batch of Shiraz grapes. They are trying to keep the older style of creating the wines through a time honoured process of pressing the grapes and extracting the juice with the least amount of ’stress’ on the fruit. Oh this industry is so full of it but it’s still a lot of fun just as long as we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

Our day was complete with a meal from Ferment-Asian, a very cute restaurant in the centre of Tanunda, followed by a hot chocolate and a Spritzer at Wine-Z across the road. Very happy I had not over-indulged as the boys in blue were out with their little straws testing all the drivers. I passed!

Our last full day began with the usual breakfast at the hotel, then a trip to the Barossa Farmers’ Market. Covid has done them no favours but apparently they are beginning to regain their vitality and we were very pleased we made the effort. There always seems to be live music.

It would be remiss of us had we not visited Jacob’s Creek and St Hugos which abutted the property where we were staying. These two wineries are among quite a few in the Barossa, owned by the French Company Pernod Rickard. They are enormous. The volume of wine produced is astronomical.

Millions of litres of white wine are stored in gigantic vats at Rowland Flats. The red wine storage area is a few kilometres to the east.

Every time we returned to the hotel, we passed a corflute, advertising a helicopter ride. I kept suggesting it would be fun. Well it happened. After visiting the town of Lyndoch and a few of the little markets, we stumbled across the Lyndoch helicopter flights. We turned in, enquired and before John could say, ’Well, we will think about that,’ we were pulling on our seatbelts and adjusting our headsets and we were off, on John’s first helicopter flight. It was a fantastic way of finishing our Barossa journey.