Those clever folk in the Barossa Valley have their own name for it: Barossa Berocca.
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Berocca should taste so good.
We’re talking sparkling red wines – an Australian invention in the winemaking world, and a delicious one at that.
“A sparking red with bacon and eggs for breakfast the next morning, and bang … your hangover is gone,” the cellar door manager at Chateau Tanunda told me.
He was dead serious.
I’m not sure about the validity of his claim, but it was a message I heard repeated a number of times on my last Barossa trip.
I should point out that my approach to dealing with hangovers is more traditional. Old school if you like: hours and hours of a thumping head and the mandatory pledge that I’ll never do it again – but I digress.
The subject of Barossa Berocca came up when my wife and I went to Teale Cafe in East Maitland recently for a sparkling brekkie (see breakout).
As is our way I wanted to take a sparkling red, she wanted a sparkling white. We went for white.
I wanted her to be designated driver, she wanted me to be. So, when I joined her after parking, we started chatting about how the Hunter Valley produces some pretty tasty sparkling wines nowadays.
The big three varieties for Hunter winemakers are semillon, shiraz and chardonnay – but there’s more than enough sparkling floating around in the valley to keep you pleased although, to be fair, most of it is white.
Tyrrell’s do an impressive sparkling, Bimbadgen has a range of them, Hungerford Hill offers good ones, including a sparkling shiraz, and, of course, there’s the sparkling wine specialists, Peterson House. They are renowned for their sparkling breakfasts (especially after an early morning balloon flight) and, as I optimistically pointed out to my wife, they have no less than four sparkling reds to choose from. You can’t go wrong.
“Champagne and eggs benedict is a classic combination,” my wife said as she tucked into her breakfast.
I couldn’t help but think sparkling shiraz and home-made beans and chorizo would be a mighty appealing combination too – dare I say a classic – but decided against it. Some things are better left unsaid.
But let me dwell on sparkling reds for a minute. If you haven’t tasted a sparkling red yet – they came in all varieties … shiraz, cabernet, pinot, and others – you’re missing something. They’re delicious – with just a little touch of decadence about them. And most importantly they’re fun.
Which just left the ticklish, but not insignificant issue, of the drive home.
