The Australian, Riding High in the Riverina featuring Borambola Wines
Borambola Wines is one of the great options of the vast experiences available here in the Riverina and we are proud to be able to call this place home.
Read below what Natasha Dragun had to say about her visit to Borambola Wines and read the full article by clicking the link below.
Twenty-six other wineries grace the region, but Borambola’s 50ha are arguably the prettiest. Estate owner Tim McMullen meets me at the cellar door and tells tales of the property’s fascinating history, from the building of the 1880 homestead to its Aboriginal sites. Such stories are immortalised on Borambola’s bottle labels: a favourite is the Double Joy Rose, so named after Prince Charles, visiting a neighbouring estate, exclaimed, “Double joy!” upon sipping McMullen’s wine.
Much of Borambola’s Indigenous heritage has been recorded by Wiradjuri man Mark Saddler, who also leads personalised tours around the Riverina through his company Bundyi Aboriginal Cultural Knowledge. We begin our day together on the banks of the Murrumbidgee, where Saddler highlights freshwater middens left behind by Aboriginal tribes as well as scar trees — living eucalypts missing a hunk of trunk, respectfully cut hundreds of years ago to craft canoes and shields. We pause atop Galore Hill Scenic Reserve for sweeping views of Wiradjuri-stewarded land, and to learn about Daniel “Mad Dog” Morgan, a bushranger who hid from the law in caves that pock the mountainside.
More than 850 varieties of Australian native plants grow across the reserve. In spring it’s a colourful patchwork of wattles, grevilleas, hakeas and flowering eucalyptus. Much of the bounty is edible, including shrubby old man’s saltbush and nardoo, a desert fern with a chocolatey flavour. “It’s really a supermarket out here,” says Saddler, whose morning tea includes damper enhanced with roasted wattleseed and lemon myrtle, and slathered with Mudgee’s Indigiearth quandong jam.
Travel + Indulgence | October 24-25, 2020 | theaustralian.com.au/travel