I have always loved the melodic sound of the Onkaparinga Valley Road and its string of small country towns with their syllabic names: Verdun and Balhannah; Oakbank and Woodside. These pearls shimmer amongst the hills and huge gum trees, especially in winter when everything is washed in a coat of lime green. My One & Only and I headed up there recently, a day out sans enfants, where we ended up entangled in the charms of Woodside.
The Adelaide Hills has been developing quite a reputation for boutique wineries and gourmet food experiences. Dropping in to the Lobethal Bierhaus to visit owner Alistair Turnbull, we discovered the Bierhaus is only open for meals on weekends. Bother. So after distracting him from his brewing for a while, we scooted back to Woodside, hedging our bets at the late hour for lunch, and cuddled up at the Woodside Providore for a generously delicious tapas platter and a glass of wine.
This is not a large café, dwelling in an old stone cottage on the main street, but there was room at the inn for us, and we found a cosy nook on a banquette by the window. An old wood stove graced one back wall, above which hung a large blackboard advertising the daily fare. Outdoor seating was available on the pavement, tall gas heaters standing like sentries beside the tables and ceiling fans strung from the overhanging veranda roof, making allowances for any weather. Inside, the ubiquitous coffee machine crouched on a corner of the counter, and a bookshelf was stacked with jars of local jams and honeys, chutneys and olive oils.
Our lunch was a feast of local deliciousness: we slathered Woodside goat’s cheese, black with ash, onto crisp Lavosh from the local Baker, Baylies, and topped it with a fig paste, made by the chef, who had also whipped up a sweet tomato relish and some moreish venison meatballs and a serve of South Australian honey soy grilled prawns with aioli, firm, fresh and o-how-I-wish there had been a bowlful. We greedily dunked bread into a vividly magenta beetroot dip and filled our mouths with pendulous purple olives from Gumeracha.
The town of Woodside was born in 1850, when local landowners subdivided their acreage to lay out the town and build the first public house, the Woodside Inn. Today it is a thriving Hills town full of attractive old homes, pubs, parks and cafes, and an interesting selection of local food and wine manufacturers. We plunged in eagerly, keen for more foodie adventures.
Beyond the High Street we found Woodside Cheese Wrights and Melba’s Chocolate and Confectionary, housed side-by-side in adjacent red brick buildings, once the Woodside Cheese, Butter and Produce Factory, now the Woodside Heritage Village.
At Melba’s you enter through old iron turnstiles from the Adelaide Showgrounds onto a vast factory floor choc-a-block with every imaginable chocolate, boiled lolly, sweet or confection, a veritable Willie Wonka’s, or Scrumptious Sweet Factory. We found old favourites like chocolate frogs and chocolate honey comb, lollypops and
licorice, beside unique novelties like the series of ‘cowpats’ (chocolate coated fruit and nuts in cowpat form) and ‘sheep nuts’ which leave little to the imagination. Traffic lights are bags of red, orange and green boiled sweets and there are a range of giants: chocolate frogs, numbers, hearts, animals and racing cars. On a large work bench at the far end we found an employee hand-carving slabs of the signature rocky road. A broken but warm and sticky endpiece came our way, the fresh marshmallow and double coating of chocolate melting all over my hands, so I was licking it off my fingers and trying to pay for our basket of goodies at the same time!
Melba’s Chocolates began in a small wash house behind Adelaide Restaurant, ‘Melba’s’ in 1981, eventually spreading into a small garage behind the Oakbank home of owners Graeme and Joy Foristal. In 1990, with the incentive of increasing popularity to expand still further, Melba’s transferred to the Woodside Farmers Union Factory which had been abandoned in 1977. Today, they share the site with Woodside Cheese Wrights.
Woodside Cheese Wrights has been producing cheeses since 1994, with milk sourced from small local dairies. Kris Lloyd, manager and Head cheese maker of Woodside Cheese Wrights uses traditional methods and makes all the cheeses by hand, with the help of her team of cheese makers.
I have seen Woodside cheeses in the Adelaide market and in gourmet shops across Australia, but never in such abundance. The range of cheeses was positively dazzling, and we left with a bagful of Edith, a traditional French style goat’s milk cheese rolled in ash, and a scrumptiously creamy Charleston Jersey Brie made from the milk of some of a rare herd of Jersey cows in the Adelaide Hills.
Well-fed on chocolate and cheese samples, it was time to move on to the wine. Bird in Hand has long been a favourite, and my oldest friend always greets my visits to Adelaide with a bottle of their best bubbles: the Sparkling Pinot Noir.
Named for a nearby gold mine discovered in 1863, Bird in Hand’s first vines and an olive grove were planted by owner Andrew Nugent on 100 acres of rich, fertile ground in the Adelaide Hills. Now a range of luxurious wines include The Nest Egg, Bird in Hand and Two in the Bush, bearing the names of these original mines.
Tucked up in the hills behind Woodside, the winery has developed since I was last here, and now boasts a smart tasting room on the side of a huge corrugated iron shed full of wooden barrels: a quirky venue for parties and weddings.
Today we are the only customers and our hostess has time to guide us expansively through the full range of cool-climate wines available, including a couple of reserves. We try an unknown – to us – and very different Nero D’Avolo and immediately bag a bottle to take home. (New to Australia, Nero d’Avola – “The Black Grape of Avola” – is a long-term Sicilian resident and one of Italy’s most important indigenous varieties.) I also indulge in a bottle of their lightly buttered Chardonnay (I’ve always been a Chardy girl) and the One & Only chooses a luscious and luxurious Shiraz.
Later, enervated and over-indulged, we stand quietly on the broad patio and gaze across vineyards and wooded hills, and wonder anew whether there is a more beautiful spot anywhere.