· History
we did not have much sleep with Alex for the last 3-4 days working on the new surprise for all our readers so we shamelessly slept in today and woke up at 0900am ... so our decision to leave the city for the short and sunny country trip was rather spontaneous and driven by the excuse of fresh air head-cleansing and green grass views brain-washing (the latter was literate of course!)
Reality
The Tokar Estate Winery hooked us in I guess... They never stamp our Entertainment Book card so we are so much attached to that place now by our own flagrant greediness... If they never do that we will end up visiting them weekly... so we should be very persistent to end this vicious Coldstream circle... I restrained myself from photographing all their flowers outside and decided to do some more dumb food-photos. I praise their olives.I have no idea where this tree is that produces such a gorgeous variety of green, small, black and giant species like that mixed in virgin olive oil with a pinch of red chilly peppers added to the brew... gorgeous... gorgeous... I praise their fresh and crusty bread that I loooooooove the most with the sides of course... i praise their coffees .. they know their coffees very well .. .we failed on the duck last time so lamb (bara---aaaa---aaa---aa--shek) was
taking the top notes and votes. I voted too to be a friendly company for Alex. The lamb won the elections and was praised.
The Star Wars
We drove off happy after this meal, chatting and ... as you know the red helicopters appear always unexpectedly in movies.... THEY DID APPEAR!!! Dasha and Tosha were even more surprised as less they expected here the aliens... We thought at once: STAR WARS; THERE ARE STAR WARS.... Finally!!! but after driving around them for almost an hour we could not find any stars , no wars were present either... It was a Levantine Hill Estate with its weird sculptures.
~ baba in yelllow lying around quite free-vo-ly
~ the arc of French triomphe (Australian variety)
~ petal ad more petals
~ parking meters (my favorite as at least this one had some sense!!!)
~ two kids without driving licence driving a turtle
~ three aliens! (Dasha and Tosha were very excited to see their bodies from outer space - ok!!!)
~ two rabbits acrobats although Alex was quite sure he saw the wallabies with long ears
~ another baba in gold
~ cherry tree and live Ferrari
~ a pine tree made out of rusty iron although I always prefer ugly plastic Christmas trees....
~ that's it folks!
As we were in a slight culture shock after this wide local exposition of talents (Alex personally preferred the wooden baba in yellow top) but I was so overwhelmed with suggestions I could not choose what I liked the most... it was very silent in the car after that for around 12 min... till the next stop of which I suddenly remember - we did not make it last time - TarraWarra Estate - at least we had something on our list to look forward to.
Tara Unbottled
was like an empty, bitchy, aging and heartless model: still ok on the outside and unwelcoming from the inside.. I suddenly realised what I liked so much some 20 years ago lost its charm and not only the exterior one... but perhaps even the interior was never there:.. all my emails to the owners of this place for the last two years remained unanswered. All the "sings" surrounding this venue were so wrong but I still did not listen and did not trust to my intuition... My stubbornness was pushing me to speak. No one looked important until I walked into the cellar door. The reception was cold and after being neglected for 20 minutes the reticence was finally followed by quite a strange conversation with the "manager" - I got the message right. It was kindly mentioned between the lines #noonecareswhatyouwant with the most unfamiliar words to me like #whoareyou #nationaltrust#mymanagerisineurope #Europe, #Europe #Ferrari, Maserati, @Porsche#bigmoney, #TVcompanies #everyonewantsus #marketingdirector, #willspeakwithyou #misunderstanding #ispeakwithwinebuyersonly#youdonotlookserious #youwilllnotbuyanythingfrommesovanish#staryjperduntysam etc etc. I realised the place got a "self promotion" right in front of my eyes and in its worst way from us straight away. If you pass it buy - just pass it by, do not stop, no one waits for you there, there are better wineries out there, there are better art galleries out there, with young, very welcoming people who work hard for their money, and who understand how marketing really works. They did not buy me for 4 cents and i was dear. they lost a many million dollars business unless - and I got it right - they did not want it. I suddenly realised I am deeply loosing the interest to the company that does not even want to know and does not care what the others do. Good luck to them. One more thing: I open my house to everyone no $10 charge for the entrance fee... and it is not even a National Trust. I thought always National Trust of Australia (Victoria) mean people belonging, it is for people as museums in Russia are free for Russians and not free for the foreigners - that was the reason of creating it - for the nation - but I think it was otherwise now...
Home,
sweet home after the last experience. We will come back to Tokar Estate 100% and will investigate the other wineries and art galleries in the region - and there are many very new and good architecture-wise - for the subject of a photoshoot, We just need not to work that hard and wake up earlier. .. Well, apart from TarraWarra the others do not charge money for stepping our feet on their soil... after all they are the ones who produce that soil so it does not belong to our feet... it belongs to their feet.