Visiting Hunter Valley has been on my to-do list for quite some time. Ever since my aunty moved there, I've been wanting to visit her new place but my family was always busy and our schedules would always clash. One day I was sitting at Starbucks with a family friend looking at flights to Japan (lol yes Japan, I am 100% going back) and we realised we had the following Monday and Tuesday off and of course our question to each other was "what should we do?". We decided on Hunter Valley and from there we started to plan our itinerary.
We left early morning on Monday the 28th and arrived there at around lunch time. Our first stop was the Hunter Valley Chocolate Company. I had this image of some bizarre over the top chocolate wonderland, where you could see how the chocolates are made (ok, in other words I imagined Charlie and the Chocolate Factory lol). But when we got there I was slightly disappointed to see that it was just a normal chocolate shop that was a little overpriced. We left empty handed and headed to our next destination.
We randomly stopped at a vineyard because we had to use the toilets and this placed ended up being my favourite!!! The vineyard was called Hungerford Hill. It ended up being our first stop for wine tasting and it did not disappoint. I'm a sucker for sweet wines, I tried their 'Early Bird Moscato 2018' and fell in love.
The next stop was Hunter Distillery (known for their vodka samples). I already knew I'd love this place after hearing all the hype about it. It was a great experience, I had no idea vodka had so many different flavours and they were surprisingly good, just saying, because I'm not a huge vodka fan. I ended up buying a honeydew melon liqueur, it's similar to midori, probably why I loved the taste.
At this point, the alcohol was starting to hit me. We had around 10 samples of vodka and previous to that we had probably 5 samples of wine at Hungerford Hill. It was time for lunch at Tempus Two to absorb all that alcohol, but we had a small pitt stop at a vineyard and took some photos.
Driving around Hunter Valley was beautiful, it's pretty much all vineyards and we were blessed with a clear day but 40 degree temperatures. Once we arrived at Tempus Two, we decided to have another wine tasting since it was near the restaurant (bad idea). After the wine tasting, you could say I was drunk, mind you it was probably around 1pm lol. While I was sitting in the restaurant everything was spinning and my words were starting to slur (at this moment, I regretted drinking all that wine). After a few good hours, I was sober and back at it the wine tasting. We visited Brokenwood Vines, Hunter Valley Smelly Cheese and Scarborough Wine Co was our last stop for the day.
The next day we booked a helicopter ride for 11am. It was my first time going on a helicopter and I wasn't nervous at all? I'm not really afraid of heights, if anything I'm an adrenaline junkie! It was beautiful and I'm glad I got to experience it. Next on my bucket list is a hot air balloon. Our last stop for the trip was Hunter Valley Gardens. It was a very hot day so we couldn't throughly enjoy the place but I managed to a get a few pretty pictures of the place.
It was a wonderful trip. I plan to visit my aunty again soon (maybe when it's not as hot). I am also so grateful for her hospitality and for always looking after me! This is probably one of my longest posts and to be honest I was getting tired lol. I forgot to mention a few look-out spots we visited but anyway, I hope this post inspired you to visit Hunter Valley too, Have a lovely Sunday!
Much love, Jen.
