Coffee, Chocolate, Wine & Spirits

What a day! Today we headed up to the Atherton Tablelands, around Mareeba to do some tastings. Once again we went to Coffee Works and spent a couple of hours tasting various coffees including single origin, blends and local coffee, as well as coffee liquors and chocolate, looking through the museum and the shop. We had to leave Cadbury in the car so we made sure we parked in the shade.

Buzzing with so much caffeine we set off to do tastings at a mango farm. There were rows and rows of mango trees in the field but the fruit was not yet ripe as it’s too early in the season.

At the back of their processing plant is their wine tasting room where we tried a variety of mango wines including dry, medium and sweet, sparkling (our favourite - and an award winner) and there were some other fruit liquors to follow - I stopped here as I was worried about driving.

Next we headed for Mount Uncle Distillery, about half an hour away where we knew Cadbury would be welcome in the tasting room (as we checked out this place last week). Here we were the only people there and we did the full tasting including a vodka made from honey, 3 different gins (one from juniper berries and botanicals, one from stronger berries and botanicals and one smoked gin), a sugar spirit (made from cane sugar but not barrel aged), a 4 year aged rum, an 8 year old whiskey, a marshmallow liquor and a chocolate liquor.

We literally rolled out the door at closing time and they kindly let us have our picnic lunch in the grounds overlooking a lovely lake. We also had a look at the animals they keep including geese, donkeys, lyre birds and alpacas. By this time we left it was after 5 and we headed beck down the Tableland Mountains, through Kuranda (stopping at the lookout over Cairns) before heading home.

We were all exhausted and a little seedy...Mum went straight to her cabin to rest and we went back, cleaned up all our lunch things and whiled away some time playing some rummy tiles outside.

Along with our usual assortment of citronella candles and lights, we put out a new painted candle holder that our son bought for us in the coffee place today. It looked lovely as it glowed a warm orange and red against the night sky.

Gadi and our boy were hungry enough to eat toasted sandwiches. I felt too nauseated and just went to bed. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll pull up ok.

Night night, I must be getting too old for mixing so many drinks!Read more