On the advice of our Aussie wine expert Tim, Sarah and I booked ourselves onto a day tour of the Yarra Valley vineyards whilst we were in the area.

This is a photo of us feeling very pleased with ourselves at 11am having already visited two wineries and tasted around 12 different wines. It was a good day.

We were picked up by our guide & minibus driver Paul at 9 in St Kilda. It turned out he had lived in Shepherds Bush for a couple of years in the mid-80s so we had a great chat about all things Shebu on the way into town to pick up the rest of the tour.

The rest of the group was, I imagine, fairly typical for this kind of tour – middle class wrinkly couples on holiday, mostly from Sydney. There were however two other young people on the bus – a couple from Auckland. Alarm bells began to gently chime as the girl stepped onto the bus and in one breath announced that the pickup was half an hour late, and that she happened to already be a bit of a wine expert having worked in a winery back home one summer.

Yarra means 'Windy' in the local Aboriginal dialect, aptly named after the windy river that shaped the rolling hills of the region. These hills are responsible for the cool climate of the region, making it perfect for the Pinot Noirs and delicate Chardonnays for which Yarra is famed.

We started off at Yering Station and were led through an introduction to tasting wine by Paul, before an extremely knowledgeable but agreeably down-to-earth guy took us through a series of 6 wines from their vineyards. The kiwi girl began to make her presence known by repeatedly interrupting with a series of inane questions. The group sighed and sipped in unison.

After each guided tasting we were free to further sample any of the wines we liked, or any others from the winery's cellars. Our favourite from Yering Station was their 5 Year Old Tawny – almost a port, it was a pretty bolshy wine to be drinking at half ten in the morning, but somehow we managed.

Next stop was the slick looking Rochford Estate (where the above photo of us was taken). This winery has recently diversified its offering by hosting an upmarket music festival each year. 400 AUD will get you a night of wine, food, and this year bands like The Pretenders and Simply Red. The tasting was fantastic. I particularly enjoyed the 2008 Chardonnay, which I learned was made from a combination of steel and oak aging to give a much more lively wine than you might expect from the grape. From the nature of the kiwi girl's interruptions this time round, it was clear she had hit the bar fairly hard at Yering Station after the first tasting. I began to wonder whether she could keep it up...

We lunched at Rochford in their swish on-site restaurant, overlooking sunny but barren winter vines. Washing my hands in the gents after the meal I discovered the kiwi girl emerging from one of the cubicles. She looked confused and muttered something about poor signage before staggering off. Two more wineries to go.

Yering Farm was the smallest of the the vineyards we visited. They position themselves as a 'boutique' winery, only putting out as much wine each year as they feel meets their high standards – a much lower yield than the more commercial vineyards. Absolutely lovely people, we bought a bottle of their delicious Late Harvest dessert wine to share with Kate and Tim when we arrived in Sydney.

Last but not least – Domain Chandon. The French champagne company established this vineyard here in the late 80s, and single-handedly kicked off the revival of the region ('If the French think this place is worth a crack, let's get in there!' Property prices doubled in as many years). Unfortunately they're not legally allowed to call wine made here champagne (they market it under 'Bubbly' or 'Sparkling'), but the process is exactly the same, right down to the labour-intensive 'riddling' stage where the bottled wine is left in racks for 25 days, and turned by hand daily so that secondary fermentation can create the trademark bubbles.

Being a French-owned winery, obviously the people working there were trained to be as snooty as possible. All wine was served with a sneer. Our kiwi girl didn't notice. At this point her boyfriend had gone to wait in the bus in disgust, leaving her to spill wine over the bar whilst posing increasingly slurred questions to whoever was serving her next drink. She was quite quiet on the way home.