There's a wide range of winery around Yarra Valley, so we decided to visit the more popular ones such as Domaine Chandon. This winery owns 50 hectares of the vineyard with Champagne varieties such as Chardonnay, Pinot Noir & Pinot Meunier.
Does this bottle of Champagne look familiar to you? I don't know much about Champagne or wine so I will not write any gibberish here. *Image is not from my own, google image searched and found this.
It wasn't too long of a drive and the place was extremely easy to find. It was also a very fine day, so lucky us! Especially when you live in a 4-season-in-one-day country, this kind of day is hard to come by. I was all equipped with my digital camera and a newly bought tripod (so excited to try it out as I was so sick of having to ask random people to take the pictures and they always turn out not the way you wanted them to be, don't you agree???).
Arriving at the main entrance of Domaine Chandon. This winery is one of the most popular tourist attractions, just outside at the car park area, there were a couple of tour buses and a flock of tourists marching to this winery for wine tasting, food exploration and just simply enjoy the beautiful valley. A perfect place to wind down after a long year (for me that is).
Pardon me, lots of selfies in this blog entry. I usually only have photos of me but this time, I didn't take many photos of just myself. Having a tripod is not the most convenient thing to carry around but obviously it was worth it as it took more stable photos and nobody needed to hold it for you. My only concern at that time was that it was super windy at times and I was worried that my tripod was going to fall and break my camera, lucky enough my camera is pretty sturdy so it weights down the tripod just fine.
and more selfie...
The restaurant and the wine tasting bar. It has indoor and outdoor seatings but it was too windy for us so we decided to sit inside instead.
More selfie before going in, typical Asian behaviour.
We ordered 4 dishes to share among 3 of us. First one was fresh oysters and believe me when I say this, they can't get any more fresh than this!! One of the best I've tasted. They also put a touch of fried garlic on top of it!! YUM~~~~
and then we had bruschetta which was also yum but I wouldn't say "Wahhh". The dish on the left is a duck dish and I wouldn't say wahh too as I don't think the duck absorbs the sauce well enough, pretty much like ordinary duck dish same with the hapuka dish on the right. The mash potato and the rest of the hollandaise-like sauce tasted great but the fish itself has not enough flavour and freshness to it.
Overall, it costs us about $35 each which is not too bad to be honest and considering we all shared the dishes. Unfortunately those dishes didn't fill us up so we had to find dessert elsewhere.
This is Dominique Portet winery just about 3 minutes away from Domaine Chandon, a smaller one and they don't have much here. Behind us is the shop selling varieties of wine and selection of patisseries.
More models wannabes.. Can't get enough of the awesome weather at 35 degrees celcius!
Let the nature do the talking!
We decided to move on to the famous chocolate factory just about 15 minutes drive from Domaine Chandon in Healesville.
I couldn't take many photos with the tripod at this location because of the extreme wind condition. I literally had to hold everything with my hands or everything was gonna fly away!
The front entrance of the chocolaterie and ice-creamery.
The shop has a transparent glass window where you can see staff baking chocolate fresh from scratch.
It has a selection of sweets and ice-cream and they also sell them in beautiful and cute packages. They are also very affordable so people should probably stock up for Valentine's Day LOL
Look! Perfect for Christmas gifts but a little too late now. Well, at least you know where to get from next time.
We rested at Lilydale lake afterwards as we were all extremely tired and it was 35 degrees at the time but in 1 minute, I saw a gust of dust moving towards us from the lake direction and Holy Moly I thought we were all gonna die in a sandstorm and I yelled out to my friend to have their back turned to the other side so not to face the lake and the whole park was covered in dust and strong gust of wind that my shoes almost flew away. A lot of people we setting up tents with their families and some families were having BBQs but the wind and sand just ruined everything. People screaming, no one dared to move and kids were crying. It was one of the most horrible things I've ever experienced in my life and in my mind I thought, what about when Tsunami happened?? I am glad that I am still alive. When we drove out, trees branches were everywhere scattered on the road.
MORAL OF THE STORY?? Take a good care of yourself during this festive season and drive safe!!
Till next year.... :)
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