Australia 8/19/2022 - 9/6/2022

Monday 8/22/2022 - d'Arenberg Cube

We woke up at 7 a.m. feeling refreshed after 10 hours of sleep, and took showers. Though our hotel room was quite simple, the shower was more than adequate. We contacted Tshering Om at around 8:30, and she and Tshering Wangchuk picked us up on their way home from dropping Rigsel at school. We went back to their house for a breakfast of toast and meat pies - yum! And coffee, of course. We were feeling pretty good after a good night's sleep, and were ready to explore.

Tshering Wangchuk had planned the activity for the day: a visit to a winery. We knew that the area around Adelaide (including McLaren Vale, where our destination was located) is known for its vineyards, so this seemed like a fun excursion. I had been to Napa, California vineyards as a kid, but Craig had never been to one before. And neither of us had ever experienced a formal wine tasting. We enjoy wine, but we are not very knowledgeable about it.

Tshering Wangchuk flashed us a photo of a modernist cube-shaped building on his phone, and said that this particular winery was known as the d'Arenberg Cube. Neither of the Tsherings had been to this specific winery before, though Tshering Wangchuk had done seasonal work at some of the vineyards in McLaren Vale. It looked intriguing to us, and we got into the car for about an hour's drive.

It was a rainy day. We saw road signs for kangaroo crossing, but we didn't actually see any of these marsupials during the drive. You can't see the Cube from the main road but when you get to it you see a large green-and-white-patterned modern glass 5-story structure rising up from the surrounding vineyards. It looked like a Rubik's Cube with the top two rows of squares askew. Chester Osborn, a 4th-generation d'Arenberg wine maker, conceived of the Cube as a metaphor for the puzzling quality of winemaking.

There were some large Salvador Dali sculptures outside. These, along with the whimsical design of the building itself, started to give us a clue that this was not your traditional winery tour. We entered the Cube and bought admission. Our $25 tickets included admission to the Cube, the Dali exhibit, and a wine tasting (a $15 ticket is also available, which leaves out the Dali exhibit).

As soon as we left the front desk, we could tell things were going to be quirky. We walked through a door and our eyes had to adjust to the low light. The ground floor felt like a basement. There were no windows and it was dark and industrial.

The dimmed lights and displayed outsider art made it reminiscent of a funhouse. This portion of the Cube is known as the Alternate Realities Museum, and contains artwork made of doll parts, rubber duckies, skeletons, masks, helmets, locks and keys, fruit, alcohol nips, salt and pepper shakers, mannequins, and just about any other imaginable found object. It felt like you were in someone's basement looking at a mass of curiosities that they had collected over a lifetime.

Our first instinct, it being a museum and all, was not to touch anything. But it soon became apparent that a lot of the art was interactive. There were pieces where you could pull levers or turn cranks or spin wheels. One entire room was filled with what turned out to be pieces for discerning smells, ostensibly to get your senses in shape for the eventual wine tasting. Glass jars were hung from bicycle handlebars. Rubber hoses ran into the jars, and by honking an old-school rubber bulb bicycle horn mechanism, you would release the scent from the jar. There were all kinds of items in the jars, from chocolate bars to herbs to straw.

Next, we went into the 360° Experience, a 360 degree projection room. At first, the film being shown was a relaxing digital landscape with Asian architecture. It was immersive, if not entirely compelling. But soon we realized that there was more to it. There were a variety of vignettes which played one after another, each one inspired by a particular d'Arenberg wine. Some of them were quite trippy, like a kaleidoscopic glowing cheshire cat straight out of Alice in Wonderland. Then there was a gnome with X-Ray glasses spinning around. This made me laugh, as I have a running joke with my friend Len about gnomes. I started to take a video to share with him, when the name of the wine popped up on the screen..."Stephanie the Gnome [with Rose-Colored Glasses]". What are the chances that it would have my name? There was also an animation which showed the Cube itself twisting through space. We stayed until we had seen all of the vignettes, sitting on brightly colored harlequin patterned furniture. We are so glad that we decided to stay rather than just passing through during the first vignette. It was tremendously enjoyable.

We then explored the second half of the Alternate Realities exhibit on the ground floor before heading upstairs in the elevator to the Dali exhibit on the second floor. This exhibit included 25 authentic Dali bronze sculptures and graphic artworks, as well as paintings by Australian surrealist artist Charles Billich. Here there was plenty of natural light, with windows overlooking the vineyards.

Then we took the elevator down to the first floor to use the rest rooms. I don't know what we expected, but even the bathrooms were an experience here. The walls were covered in astroturf, plastic plants, and various doll parts. At first we didn't even know what to do. The doors to the men's and ladies' rooms were camouflaged by the astroturf. If we didn't see a little sign saying "ladies toilet" on one portion of the astroturf wall and "men's toilet" on another portion, we wouldn't have known where to go...the doors to each rest room were camouflaged by the plastic greenery. Inside each stall, there were murals inspired by d'Arenberg's wines. It was probably the most unique bathroom I've experienced.

Next, we went to the fourth (top) floor of the Cube for the wine tasting. This was a large open space with 360 degree views of the vineyards and a bar in the middle. Each party of visitors found a place at the bar, and a bartender guided them through a flight of wines. Tshering Om doesn't drink, but the rest of us decided to try a flight of reds. Our wines were

Red Regional Heroes:

2018 The Derelict Vineyard
2021 The Innocent Weed
2020 The Footbolt
2017 The Laughing Magpie
2017 The Coppermine Road
2013 The Eight Iron

We didn't get to taste my namesake wine (Stephanie the Gnome [with Rose Colored Glasses]), because it is a white wine, and our flight was exclusively reds. The wine was delicious, and the bartender walked us through the dominant notes of each wine. With her help, we were able to put a name to the flavors that we were experiencing, which we wouldn't have been able to accomplish on our own, being largely inexperienced wine drinkers.

The views of the vineyard were stunning from up here. Had the weather been better, we would have been able to enjoy the outdoor viewing platforms and the grounds below.

There was also interesting art in the tasting room...the bar was covered in rainbow colored wine hoses, and there were nutcrackers hung on the wall. There was also a mannequin in a go-kart being pulled by chess knights, and a roulette wheel decorated with doll parts, plastic food, and stuffed animals.

Then we went downstairs to the third floow to Eat @ Polly's, the restaurant, for lunch. There was art all around the dining room, including a statue of a naked man bound in a cage hanging from the ceiling. The chairs were of the same bright colored harlequin pattern as the ones in the 360 projection room. Craig had a Swell Golden Ale. We had passed the Swell brewery on our way to the Cube, so it was a very local beer. I had a "spring onion pancake with mushroom XO", Craig had "chewy five spice mushroom and chestnut dumplings", and we split an egg fried rice. It was delicious, expecially Craig's dumplings (we shared). The flavors were so exquisite!

Tshering Om started to get a little restless at around 2 p.m. Come to find out, we had to pick Rigsel up at school by 3:15, and we were still an hour away. So we beat a hasty retreat from McLaren Vale and arrived at Rigsel's school just in time.

Rigsel got into the car and said he had a great day at school. He wanted to go to the library, so we stopped there on the way home from school. It is a very nice library, and there is a section with video game consoles. Rigsel got set up on one console, playing Minecraft in Creative Mode. Two older boys got set up at an adjacent console, played a game of basketball, and then headed home. It is cool that the library has these kind of amenities, as it makes it relevant to today's kids. Some other kids from Rigsel's school very politely asked if they could play Minecraft with him, and soon there were a bunch of kids all playing together.

By now it was absolutely pouring. We could hear the rain drumming on the roof of the library. We ran to the car to avoid getting drenched.

When we got back to their house, Rigsel played Minecraft. He said he was disappointed that he didn't have Creative Mode (the mode where you don't die). I fooled around in the settings and figured out how to turn it on. Rigsel was ecstatic.

I did some posts to Facebook and Instagram at their house. We had samosas and coffee, followed by pasta and juice. They certainly made sure that we had enough to eat! We watched Youtube videos on their TV. First we watched some programs about Bhutan. Then Tshering Om put on some programs about Guatemala, knowing that our godchildren live there. "Island Hopper TV" had an episode about Lake Atitlan, which is where our godchildren live. It was surreal to be in Australia with Bhutanese friends watching videos about Guatemala! At around 8:40 p.m., Tshering Wangchuk brought us back to the hotel, and we went to sleep shortly after 9.

We really can't emphasize enough what a great time we had at the d'Arenberg Cube. It was an experience for all the senses. If we had been expecting some sort of traditional vineyard tour, which emphasizes the physical process of winemaking, we might have been disappointed. This was an entirely different beast. We enjoy wine, but we are not super knowledgeable about it. This was the perfect blend of experiences to be enjoyable for folks like us who are not wine nerds. It is much more conceptual, representing the art and creativity that goes into winemaking.

d'Arenberg Cube