Hunter Valley has wonderful scenery and is home to a large wine and coaling industries. To the south it stretches from Goulburn River and Wollemi National Park and right up to Barrington Tops National Park to the North. Lower Hunter is where most of the vineyards can be found but Upper Hunter also has vineyards as well as horse breeding and racing. During the year there are festivals and it is a great place for music from folk, jazz and even opera. In the Hunter there are several galleries and museums to see.

The tours have small personal friendly groups of a max of 19 people. On our tour there were 10 people so you could ask any questions you wanted to easily. On the journey on the bus you saw the vineyards scattered about the place. It takes 2 hours by car from Sydney to get to Hunter Valley.

Next stop was Drayton's Family wines which is 100% family owned for more than 140 years. We got a winery tour and learnt about the wine making process and seen how they do it. This was from the crushing of the grapes to the bottling of the wine. They showed us how they put the corks and screw tops onto the wines and explained that when the machinery was running someone had to be with it at all times as bottles can fall off the racks. Also because they need to be boxed. We were shown where the wine was stored and some old machinery they no longer use. It would have been interesting to someone who likes machinery and the process of making wine. It didn't really interest me I was more interested in the small kitten running about the store lol but my boyfriend found the whole process fascinating! What I was more interested in was the wine tasting. We got to try different red, white and desert wines. Other drinks we got to taste was port and liqueurs. There was two jugs in the middle of the room were you could throw you wine out if you didn't want or like it and bottles of water. Cheese and crackers was also available which I thought was a nice touch. Each wine was described how it tasted and what food it would be best with before we tasted it.

Last stop was Tulloch which has been producing wines in Hunter Valley for 111 years. They do functions, weddings, corporate and social events. This place seemed the most upmarket of them all. We were taken into what looked like a board room and tasted more wine, port and liquors. By this stage I had enough of tasting wine and was glad it was the last stop. Here we got a price list with all the wines available and it showed us on the list what food suited what wine. We also were shown a good aged wine (dark orange) and a bad aged wine (very dark orange). The area was lovely and there was an outdoor area which would be perfect for functions and events. It would be somewhere nice to have a wedding party I would think as its very quiet and has beautiful scenery.

Personally I enjoyed this tour as it was something I hadn't done before, the Hunter Valley's scenery was nice and I learnt new stuff about wine which was useful. Each winery I learnt something new which was nice however a lot of the things were repeated each place. I got to taste reds, whites, Golden Tango Cream, Butterscotch Schnapps, Dragons breath, dessert wines, Port and Chocolate Liquor. I don't think I would have went to Hunter Valley unless I was doing some activity as the scenery is lovely but not worth while going to see by itself.