Cabernet Sauvignon from Yarra Valley, Australia

This is one of those intriguing things that can happen when you travel and I may in fact, have previously posted about it. If so, bear with me, and if not, then you should get a chuckle from it. I definitely posted about our day of the Yarra Valley wine tour when we were in Australia. On that tour we visited five wineries and the very leisurely luncheon stop was at the Domaine Chandon. We (okay, I) noticed a couple at another table because the woman was wearing a beautiful top that caught my eye. We were finishing up at the next winery we visited after that and sure enough the same couple came in. We said hello, exchanged the kind of, “are you having a good time?”, sort of pleasantries that you do and discovered they were celebrating their 20th anniversary and we of course were celebrating our 25th although it was a month after. Unfamiliar with the actual sequence of wineries, we then proceeded to the last one for the day. Yes, you guessed it, the couple came in not long after we did. They were self-touring, but one of the staff at another winery had told them this was a “must do”.

Naturally, we began to chat more under the circumstances and of all the people that we could have met, they were both scuba divers and lived not too far from Cairns where we had the first leg of our journey. Not only were they divers, he was a doctor and therefore dealt with a lot of divers needing medical clearance or that had suffered accidents while diving. Then, as we talked more, we finally got around to introducing ourselves to Stephen and Beth. That was almost too much coincidence – Beth is my middle name and what I was called until I came into the Army and Charlotte got shortened to Charlie. I decided at that point that we would take one of the bottles we were bringing home and save it for one year from the day. I wrote a note on the label to remind us and that day was December 13th. We had lovely grilled lamb chops and the bottle of 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon, Dominique Porter, Yarra Valley. It was an excellent bottle, although I’m not sure they distribute in the USA. We trust that the couple had a nice meal that evening, too, wherever they happened to be.