Country lifestyle

Tonight we have been invited to dinner at Sue's.  Sue is a beautiful lady who was previously a teacher, but now works part-time at the cellar door at Sevenhill wines.  She is also part of the Barry family wine dynasty.  For interest's sake, here's a little Barry background from the Jim Barry website (http://jimbarry.com/)

Certain names resonate strongly within the halls of Australian wine history. Jim Barry Wines is one of those names. It was Jim Barry’s drive and community spirit that helped shape South Australia’s Clare Valley as a benchmark in the world of Riesling and cemented its place as one of Australia’s premier wine regions.

Jim Barry Wines has a strong lineage. Jim himself was the first qualified winemaker in the Clare Valley, graduating as the 17th student to gain a Degree in Oenology at the famous Roseworthy Agricultural College in 1947. Working for 22 years as winemaker at the Clarevale Co-operative, Jim Barry became a pioneer of Australian table wine and helped Taylors Wines establish in 1969.

Wife, Nancy, proved a driving force in the formation of Jim Barry Wines and sons, Peter, Mark & John were involved in the company’s rise. Peter Barry became managing director in 1985. Today Peter’s sons Tom and Sam both work for Jim Barry Wines as winemaker and commercial manager, while daughter Olivia is studying at university with an interest in joining the company. Current custodian’s, Peter & Sue Barry, are deeply proud that Jim Barry Wines is still family owned, with three generations of Roseworthy graduates.

The Barry family name is synonymous with the Clare wine region and their deep ties to the local community continues to this day. Jim Barry sadly passed away in 2004 and was recently honoured with a “Legends Hall of Fame” award at the 2014 Clare Valley Gourmet Weekend.

Sue, as mentioned above, should not be confused with the Sue Barry mentioned in the article.  Our Sue is Sue McKee (originally Barry), and the Sue in the article is her brother Peter's wife.  A little confusing!  Barrys abound in the Clare Valley, as Nancy and Jim had six children who now all have children and grandchildren of their own! 

But that's not the point.  The point is...living in a small town.  Or, more likely, living in a small town with Jeremy.  People seem to be drawn to Jeremy.  His friendly ways have definitely helped me make a few friends.  Our penchant for bike rides with friends around the valley has also familiarized some of the locals with us.  In the country, people just invite you over for dinner.  They genuinely want to get to know you. In Adelaide, we did make friends, but most of them are other 'transplants' - people who moved to Adelaide as adults.  In comparison, I have found the people in Clare to be extremely warm and welcoming.

For example, Jeremy's car needed to go in for repairs.  We have a lifestyle where we both absolutely need to own cars at the moment, there's no getting around it.  However, there is no car rental place in Clare.  No worries, one of the receptionists at Jeremy's work calls her friend at the Toyota dealership and he brings round a dealer car for him to borrow at $20/day.  A couple of weeks after Jeremy's car was repaired, mine completely bit the dust.  I called Jeremy to see if I might be able to get the same deal - again, no problems.  The dealer actually drove the car to our house, handed me the keys, and said to use it as long as I needed and drop it off at the dealership when I was finished with it.  I had that car for almost two weeks.  Imagine the hassle, headaches and cost of renting a car from a rental company in Adelaide?  That was incredibly convenient and they didn't think twice about it.  When I dropped it off, he said not to hesitate if I ever needed to borrow a car again.

Next story: Jen and Chris (who I had been staying with for the last 10 months in Adelaide) have gone back to Brisbane.  At one of the Friday night 'wine nights' at the local information centre, Jeremy is chatting with a group of people and mentions that we're a bit stressed about finding me another place to stay.  He didn't have an agenda, it just came up in conversation.  A few minutes later, a lovely lady by the name of Caroline (who is a retired senator!) approaches me and says she has a townhouse in Norwood (Ottawa equivalent = Glebe, Westboro) if I'd like to stay there during the week.  She says it's not very 'flash' (hahaha) but I'm welcome to use their place.  I will 'move in' at the end of July and will be paying a nominal amount of rent - they could easily rent this place out for at least 4-5x what I will be paying them.

It's very clear to me why Jeremy wants to stay here.  Decisions will have to be made at some point - will a PhD do me any good in Clare?  But it's pretty darn tempting to stay.