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At $150,000 a couple, the Barossa Valley’s three-day Sainthood Experience at prestigious Barossa Valley and Coonawarra label St Hugo is the latest, and potentially priciest, luxury food and wine tourism package in Australia.
Getting closer to God comes with the opportunity to blend your own exclusive red with chief winemaker Dan Swincer, who personally delivers to your door when the wine is ready, a private flight from the Barossa to the Coonawarra to select a vineyard row named in your honour, accommodation at five-star Barossa establishment The Louise, and an eight-course degustation dinner in the new St Hugo Restaurant at Rowland Flat near Tanunda.
There are chauffeurs, bespoke meals and exclusive access to museum wines.
We are in the Barossa to sample a mix of the wine tourism offerings from the Pernod Ricard stable — including St Hugo tastings and gourmet food experiences — just weeks after the opening of the label’s first cellar door.
Part of that includes a food and wine sensory experience with executive chef Mark McNamara, founding partner in Appellation at The Louise, who takes us through a food and wine matching session before we are given an hour to create a meal from our preferences.
We swirl the 2012 vintage St Hugo Private Collection Barossa Valley Shiraz, inhaling, sipping and swallowing it before chewing on some spinach. The flavour combination fails, turning the wine sour.
Nor do the spices or the earthy foods we nibble on, such as beetroot or carrot, work.
But almonds make the St Hugo sing, and so do blood sausage and bitter cocoa, turning the powder into an explosion of flavour. McNamara’s resulting dish, which we eat sitting at a chef’s table while talking to the kitchen team, includes an olive, vanilla and cocoa tapenade with witlof and nut oil salad, and grilled quail. It goes spectacularly with the shiraz.
“Everything we do is about enhancing these wines and putting them on the food stage,” McNamara says. “It’s about how different categories of food go with these wines.”
The offerings will give another boost to the Barossa’s reputation, which in August was named the No 1 food and wine destination in a survey by travel website Lastminute.com, and one of the international “top foodie destinations that you have never heard of” by Booking.com. In May, Adelaide was also named a Great Wine Capital of the World.
The St Hugo cellar door — actually a wine tasting lounge, bar and restaurant — opened in late September. Named after the winery’s original owner, Louis “Hugo” Gramp, St Hugo’s first 1980 vintage was sourced from vines from the Coonawarra and Barossa, some planted in 1925. The Rowland Flat property was built in 1854. Hugo Gramp’s father, Gustav, planted the first vines in the Barossa, across the road, in 1847.
For the relatively budget-conscious, St Hugo offers a $30,000 two-day Prestige Experience with wine blending, private tours and a vine named in your honour or a $10,000 Legacy Experience with a helicopter flight over the region.
This is no bus tour, cellar door experience. Those who come to taste St Hugo do so with a flight of vintages or varieties and are encouraged to relax and enjoy the wines rather than rushing out the door to get back on the bus.
Swincer, a winemaker at St Hugo for the past decade, appreciates having a venue to extol the virtues of his brand.
“When people are buying wine at the higher end they know they’re going to get a different experience,” Swincer says. “They’re going to get a different taste and a different challenge.”
Sourse: theaustralian.com.au
