13th January 2011, Victoria
I absolutely LOVE Brown Brothers Orange and Flora Muscat! It’s a dessert wine – and ever since I tried it at my Dad’s birthday meal in the Lake District a few years back I’ve been finding any excuse to drink it. I mean what could be better! Alcohol that you drink with dessert… it’s like they combined my two favourite things in the world! So of course, when I realised we were coming to Oz I was straight on Google finding the directions to the place! And just by chance ( hmmmmm no planning there then Helen!!!) it was roughly on our route!
After leaving the Grampians, we headed towards Ballarat as that’s where Mum’s cousin lives. When we got there and guess what, I couldn’t find the address anywhere (later found neatly written on a sheet and put somewhere very safe so as not to lose!) so we headed straight out (after a quick visit to Aldi of course!) and on the way to the direction of the winery region.
With the price of accommodation being so expensive Jon persuaded me to spend the night in a truck stop. This was fine apart from the fact I was convinced we were going to get told off all night! Plus it was a really hot night and once the air con had been off for half an hour or so we were absolutely sweating our nuts off – or Jon was! : ) Luckily, we were right next to McDonalds so breakfast was quite a straightforward affair and then we were off to the Brown Brothers – yippee!!! 
We were about 2 hours early at the winery. Luckily there was a cheese factory down the road where you could try some samples. They were actually really yummy so it was a shame we couldn’t take any… but it did kill an hour and by the time we returned we had just enough time to try a few different wines before lunch that we’d booked. The restaurant had a system where each course came with a selected wine; so 3 glasses each. However, Jon was driving and he’s not really one for wasting things so I was virtually paralytic by the time we were finished… even with all the food! It was excellent! And what a great idea to have your wine and food matched! If I ever become a restaurant owner I will totally have recommendations to go with each meal! The only downside was that I couldn’t finish the last glass and Jon was so disappointed in me!
When we headed back to the cellar to buy a couple of bottles of wine that we liked, we mentioned we’d come all the way from England and so this lovely man gave us a tour of the original cellar with some of the original bottles. This was really awesome but all I could do was nod and smile and let Jon do most of the talking! I did get my photo with him at the end though – hurrah!
It was only about 3pm when we left Brown Brothers and in my merry state, I noticed a sign pointing to Glenrowan only a few miles back down the road. 
It lookks like all Brown Brother's wine is enjoyable!
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