With Dad’s birthday coming up on April 24th, we are having a birthday dinner at my brother’s house tomorrow night. In the meantime Mum and I are spending each day visiting wineries as Orange is a reasonably prominent wine region and I’ve only visited one or two.

Yesterday was Swinging Bridge, a family-run winery a short drive out on the north side of town.

With a new cellar door set up, it was a very pleasant place to spend an hour on a slightly rainy afternoon. We were served by the daughter of the owner who, at 19, knew a lot about wine and even had a wine named after her (Eliza).

Swinging Bridge tastings were $15 for six wines and the room we sat in had a lovely view across to Mount Canobolas.

Afterwards we drove back to Michael’s to see him laying the last of the lawn and I wasn’t even out of the car before I was sent to Bunnings for bags of lawn soil mix. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I spend half my time in Orange running errands for other people, but I do spend the rest of my time lying around reading so it’s probably a good thing.

Michael has perfected the art of lawn-growing and his back yard square is like carpet, it’s so flat and even. I know lawns are not terribly fashionable these days, but a square of bright green grass is a special kind of joy on a warm day. I’m a bit sad Bonnie isn’t here to enjoy it with me.

The second winery we visited was Philip Shaw, one of the more established and expensive wineries in the district.

Wednesday was a perfect day for sitting in such a lovely setting and we spent a couple of hours enjoying the $25 cheese plate and wine samples. There are 13 wines on the sample list and we tried maybe 10 of them

I ended up buying a bottle of sparkling and Mum bought a couple of bottles of red for Dad.

So I guess what I’m saying is, if you like wine, get yourself to Orange!