December 31, 2004 - Sydney

After dinner, Joe, Adrienne, Stephanie (13 yrs) and Alvin (6 yrs) all came up to our hotel to watch the New Years fireworks. They do fireworks twice in Sydney Harbour - once for the kids at 9pm, which is when it's New Year's at the International Dateline - and again at midnight. We're on the club level (30th floor), so we had access to the club and had this great view of the 9pm fireworks. The little white smudge at lower left is the opera house - that's how huge these fireworks were! We're going down in just a couple of minutes for the midnight show... so Happy New Years everybody - all the best for 2005!! We're thinking about all of you!!

We arrived back in Sydney at about 6pm and met Joe and his wife and kids in Chinatown for dinner. We met them at the Chinatown entrance here. We spent lots of quality time with Joe and Ammar this week. We didn't have our camera last night, but we had a great dinner with Ammar and Olga on Bondi beach (pronounced Bond-eye) last night at an Asian fusion restaurant called Mu Shu. Ammar gave us a tour of all the beaches between downtown Sydney and Bondi. We watched the sunset over the cliffs at Bondi. 

Here is the "cellar door" at Cooper Winery, our 3rd and final winery. The southern region of the Hunter that we toured is most famous for Semillon grapes (white) and Shiraz (red), so we sampled those at every stop. We also gave test runs to many chardonnays, rieslings, merlots, and cabernet sauvignons. We spent the day discussing French vs. American oak aging and cork vs. screwcap bottle-stopping. They have chosen not to use corks in Australian wines since 2003 because of "cork taint." Go figure. Which reminds me - Australia and New Zealand have a Sox-Yankees thing going. Which reminds me - the Yankees are running away with the logo count. The current score is Yanks 23, Sox 11. More on that later.  

This is a row of Chardonnay grapevines at the Peppertree Wineries, our 2nd stop. Temp was in the 90s out there today. 

Today we toured the wineries of Hunter Valley - known as "The Hunter." It was a 2-hour drive due north from Sydney. We had an extremely articulate and entertaining tour guide, a British transplant named Mike. He provided an outstanding history of Australia, starting with the whole convict deal, and was very knowledgable about wines and wineries worldwide. Our tourmates included 4 Brits, 2 other New Yorkers, couples from Russia, Sweden, Norway, and New Zealand, and a flamboyantly gay gentleman from Switzerland. Nice group. Of course Mike was fond of ethnic humor, and none of us were spared. As far as his American jokes, it's safe to say you would not have appreciated Mike's humor if you voted Red in the last election. The W jokes got the biggest laughs of all. (The Russians didn't laugh once.) Here is a shot of the hillside near McWilliam Vineyards, our 1st wine tasting stop of the day. They are the makers of Mount Pleasant wines. We sent a few bottles home!