About Lucinda

How I Got Here

I do not run ads. There are no banner ads, no pop-ups, no sponsored content blocks. The only money that comes in is the Viator affiliate commission on bookings made through tracked links.

My first cellar door was Yalumba, in 2014. A friend was getting married in Tanunda and I had a spare afternoon. I drove a hire car up from Adelaide with no plan, walked into the old stone building on Eden Valley Road, and tasted a Cabernet Sauvignon that cost me $8 to pour. It was the first time I understood that wine could be a place as much as a drink.

That afternoon turned into a second visit the next day. Then a third trip the following spring. Then a long weekend in the Hunter. Then a Yarra Valley tour that was so badly organised I wrote a complaint email to the operator and then, halfway through writing it, realised I would rather write the tour myself. Somewhere between the Hunter and Margaret River, this became a habit.

I have now done over 200 cellar door tastings across Australia. About 30 of them were genuinely worth the drive. The rest taught me what to look for, and more what to avoid.

What I Am Not

I want to be clear about this because the internet is full of people pretending to be things they are not.

I am not a sommelier. I do not hold a WSET certification. I have never worked a vintage in a winery. I do not have a Master of Wine. I do not get paid to taste wine. I buy every bottle I review with my own money, and I pay full price at every cellar door unless a friend has comped me, which they sometimes do.

I am not a chef. The "Plates" half of Vines & Plates is about food in the context of wine regions: vineyard restaurants, hampers on the lawn, the cheese plate that comes with the tasting flight. I am not qualified to review restaurants on their own merits. I only talk about food when it is part of the wine tour experience.

I am not a travel agent. I do not book tours for people. I do not take commissions from tour operators beyond the standard Viator affiliate payment (more on that below). I do not run group trips. I am one person with a notebook and a strong opinion about Barossa shiraz.

What I Actually Do

I read the itineraries. Every tour linked from this site has had its day-by-day schedule, its pickup times, its promised cellar doors, and its real cellar doors, compared by me or by a wine-industry contact I trust. If a tour says it visits Seppeltsfield and Henschke and Penfolds and Yalumba all in one day, I know it does not, because the drive alone would take three hours. I tell you which tours cut which corners.

I taste the wines. Not in a lab, and not in a way that produces tasting notes with seven adjectives and a minerality score. I taste them at the cellar door, in the order they are poured, with whatever food is on offer. If a tour pours five wines and I think two of them are genuinely interesting, I say so.

I drive the routes. I have driven the Barossa to Clare corridor in a hailstorm. I have driven the Yarra Valley in peak holiday traffic. I have taken the train to the Hunter from Sydney Central and counted how many hours of daylight are left after the two-hour ride. This is the part most wine websites skip. The wine matters, but so does the drive.

I talk to the cellar door staff. The people pouring your wine know which tours bring engaged visitors and which bring groups who arrive late and leave early. They also know which operators have arranged private tastings and which have just booked the standard bench tasting. That information is gold and most of it is not on the website.

How This Site Makes Money

I earn a commission when you book a Viator tour through one of the links on this site. My Viator Partner ID is P00299531. The commission comes out of Viator's margin, not yours. You pay the same price you would pay if you went to Viator directly. I have no other source of income from this site.

I do not accept free tours. If a tour operator invites me on a complimentary trip, I decline, and I pay for the experience myself later. I have done this enough times to know it changes how you write about the day, even when you are trying to be fair.

I do not accept paid placements. No operator has ever paid me to rank their tour higher, include their tour in an article, or remove a negative comment. If a tour is bad, I say it is bad. If a tour is excellent, I say it is excellent. The Viator commission pays the same either way, so there is no financial pressure either direction.

Why I Wrote This Page

Because anyone can build a wine review site, and most of the ones I have read are quietly funded in ways that change what they recommend. I wanted one page that says exactly how this site works, who is behind it, and what my financial incentives are. You are reading it.

If you want to get in touch about a tour I have missed, a winery I should visit, or a region I have not covered yet, the contact page has my email. I read everything that comes in, and I answer most of it within a week.

The 30 That Were Worth It

I keep a private list of the cellar doors that genuinely earned the drive. Yalumba is on it, obviously. So are about 29 others, scattered across the four regions I cover. I do not publish the full list because part of the pleasure is finding them yourself, but every tour I recommend on this site has been checked against that list.

If you want to know which tours will get you to the cellar doors that matter, start with the region hubs. I have tried to make it as easy as possible to find a tour that is actually worth booking, rather than the one with the best photos and the cheapest price.