Stanthorpe Small Winemakers Festival
Getting There
The Small Winemakers Festival is held every year in October in Stanthorpe.
You can camp out in the Stanthorpe show grounds (this is where they have the festival) so nice and close to get home after the wine tasting.
The festival is on Saturday night so we left the Sunshine Coast first up in the morning. If driving through Brisbane you go via Willowbank, Aratula, up Cunningham’s Gap then on to Warwick and finally Stanthorpe – this is a 3 hour 45 minute drive without any stops. The other route from the Sunshine Coast is via Kilcoy, Esk, Gatton then to Warwick and finally Stanthorpe. This is route is an extra 30 minutes. We prefer the longer route but take the shorter trip on the way back. The longer route is far more picturesque however the shorter route has a good little stretch through Cunningham’s Gap.
There are lots of different places to stop along the way and will depend on the individual traveller. Look out for some of the cool little rest areas between Gatton and Warwick near West Haldon. This part of the trip is windy and the road can get quite narrow so drive carefully. On our last trip we came across a really bad accident where it looked like someone tried to overtake in a really bad spot.
Eventually we make it to the Stanthorpe show grounds, setup the Oz Tent on a nice grassy area. There are toilets and showers as well. You will need to call the grounds keeper to pay your camp fee of around $15. Once setup we stroll across to the large wool shed that is the venue for the wine tasting. An enjoyable afternoon and evening is had with some great wine and really good food.
Read all about the Stanthorpe Small Winemakers Festival below.
Shayne’s Recount
In the late spring we set out for Stanthorpe. Our weekend plans involved the Stanthorpe Small Winemakers Festival… a hidden gem of an event that we had first attended the year before. In wine tasting as in 4 wheel driving and camping, we are enthusiastic amateurs! Stanthorpe is a long but scenic drive from the Sunshine Coast. We arrived a few hours prior in order to set up our tent in the showgrounds. This we had found was a cheap (around $15 if memory serves) and convenient option which wasn’t taken up by many others. It meant our tent was within staggering distance of the hall where the event was held. As a bonus there were several cubicles with toilets and hot showers with excellent water pressure and even a little laundry on site.
Having set up it was time to glam up – somewhat. Putting a pretty dress on whilst camping seemed a little incongruous. Whilst we were getting dressed my sister Dani and her then boyfriend now fiancé Dan arrived. It was their first time at the event and first time camping. They had borrowed a tent however we soon found that when I’d said they didn’t have to bring anything (meaning we would supply food and drink) they’d taken this very literally. Apart from the tent and clothing they just had themselves! The meaning of ‘not needing to bring anything’ continues to be a bit of a sore point.
Anyhow we set off the few hundred metres to the main hall. Soon we were settled around our table – the group name was ‘More wine’ in honour of Cersei Lannister of GOT. The table was laden with lots of yummy snacks – olives, cheeses, cold meats and crackers. We wasted no time in lining our stomachs. Also on hand were that years booklets listing the wine in categories according to type and with the score given to each by the judges. The idea was that you went up to the amazing volunteers and stated the letter and number you wanted to sample and they kindly provided you with a splash in your customised glass. Then, depending on how much you wanted to imbibe and how much you really cared about the wine you either gulped it down and joined the back of the queue again or, if you wished to be a little more sophisticated, returned to your table to sip. There was always a rush on the gold star wines initially.
Peter, true to his nature had already downloaded the app to score and make notes of each of the wines he trialled. My friend Ari and I usually started off in a similar fashion, scoring the wines with the pencils provided along with little tasting notes. Of course we tried to be as poncey as possible when doing so – making wise comments to each other about ‘body’ and ‘legs’…. However as the afternoon wore on these notes would be less and less legible and eventually we’d give up on them altogether!
Another part of the excellent value for money was the buffet lunch about midway through. This consisted of a delicious roast with all the trimmings and certainly helped reduce the impact of all the wine sampled. Despite this though towards the evening the older ladies and occasional man generally had enough liquid courage to take to the dance floor. This was something of a spectator sport for Ari and I. After a while of watching this I realised that Peter had been MIA for a while. Searching the crowded hall I eventually found him with a lively gay couple who had taken a shine to him… so much so that one of them slung his arm over my shoulder and told me to never forget how lucky I was to have him (Peter that is, not his new friend!).
Towards the end of the tasting our little group had congregated around one of the little buckets set up for spitting your wine into if you were that kind of person (we were not!). “Look at you lot, around the fancy bucket,” commented one fellow wine taster as she tottered by. Needless to say ‘fancy bucket’ became our new favourite phrase
Eventually the time came when we didn’t have to go home but couldn’t stay there. We made our slightly unsteady way back to our camp site, past the large courtesy buses packed mostly with boomers. Dinner was was a vegetarian chilli con carne that we’d made the night before and simply had to reheat (which was good as we weren’t really up to doing much more!). Ari has made the mistake of arriving a little late and so had to set up her swag after all the wine sampling which meant that the rest of us got dinner and a show! In the end though we all managed to get to bed, appropriately bundled up as we had learned the year prior that Stanthorpe nights were chilly even in October. The next day Peter and I would be taking our hangovers into NSW where we had booked a site on a private property in Cullendore.
We would highly recommend the Stanthorpe Small Winemakers Festival. It is a really good outing, you meet some great people and gives you the chance to explore a beautiful part of the country.
Our blog post on Cullendore High Country is here.
For more information on the Stanthorpe Small Winemakers Festival check out their website here – https://www.asws.com.au/
The thoughts of Shayne.
