Talits Estate, Hunter Valley offering virtual wine tour packages amid COVID-19 pandemic
For all the wine lovers out there, you can now do a virtual wine tour right from your lounge room! Hunter Valley winery Talits Estate offers a professional guide while sipping one of their top drops.
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Almost everything is being moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic and now virtual wine tours are becoming a thing.
If you love wine — and who doesn’t — you can now do a wine tour right from your loungeroom, with professionals to guide you through.
Talits Estate — a family-owned vineyard and luxury holiday home in the Broke Fordwich winemaking region of the Hunter Valley — offers a virtual wine experience, which can even be joined by friends and family.
Firstly you purchase the wines online, either a three or six wine package.
When they’re delivered, customers then organise a time with the Talits Estate team. It also comes with tasting notes.
“You have a private wine tasting with cellar door staff to run you through and answer any questions about what you’re tasting, why you’re tasting it and the wine techniques,” Market and Operations Manager Matthew Gillings said.
“We do it on the customers preferred channel, facetime, Zoom, Skype, we’re flexible.
“We also offer to join us on a video tour of the cellar, property and wet the appetite for when you can come in person.
“By doing this we can stay in touch with those members that don’t get to visit us frequently and have the experience at home whenever they like.
“We’ve got members in WA who are doing a virtual wine tasting in Newcastle.”
Over the last nine months Talits Estate has also been building a new cellar door - a modern interpretation of a French provincial house - but in unlucky times, it’s opening has been delayed.
“With the bushfires and COVID-19, we have been patiently awaiting the opportunity to open our doors to the wine loving community,” Mr Gillings said.
“The timing has not been on our side in 2020.
“In the meantime we are available for bottle tastings and virtual wine tours.”
Let’s hope they keep the virtual tours past the pandemic!
For all the information on the virtual wine tours click HERE.
THEIR STORY
The estate — designed by French architects — sits on 50 acres of beautifully crafted gardens, olive trees and award-winning Merlot and Shiraz vines.
Winemaker Daniel Binet has been twice nominated for The Wine Society’s Young Winemaker of the Year and Hunter Valley Rising Star and recently the Hunter Wine Excellence scholarship.
“The vines and the country home have been here for some time, about 25 years,” Mr Gillings said.
“The original house was built by journalist Mike Willesee nearly 30 years ago.
“Previous to the family taking ownership of the property eight years ago, the vines and the grapes were sold to local wineries to produce wine.
“Once the family acquired the property we started making our own wine and it’s gone from strength to strength every year.”