In December of 2013, Padma and I were eating snapper at the Sydney Fish Market while our mate, John Peacock, was going on and on and on and on about the fabulous wine walks which our mutual friends Marlene and Juergen Diekmann organised in the Rhinelands near Bonn. They sounded like fun but I never thought we’d ever be able to attend one.

Fast forward to September 2017 and Padma and I joined the Diekmanns and a dozen other colleagues for a walk on the Rotweinwanderweg, the fabled Red Wine Trail in the Ahr Valley. John hadn’t exaggerated. The wine walks really are fabulous.

Our group of 14 converged at the Ahr Valley town of Rech, which is just shy of an hour train ride from Bonn. We crossed the Ahr River and walked through vineyards to Altenahr. The entire Rotweinwanderweg runs for 35 km but we covered a mere seven kilometres so that we could leave plenty of the trail for another day. The weather gods were in our favour and by the time we reached Mayschoß we had peeled off several layers of clothing. Marlene had organised a rest break at the Weinhaus Michaelishof where some of us tried out ‘New Wine’ which is juice from freshly crushed white winegrapes right out of the fermenter. After drinking the very sweet ‘New Wine’, I think we all decided that we’d rather wait till the wines finish fermentation!

From Mayschoß we walked through vineyards and occasional forests to Altenahr where Marlene had organised another chance to enjoy the local fruits of the vine. We weren’t alone though. Late September and October is vintage time in the Ahr and as a result every weekend is a wine fest. There were indeed a lot of happy people in the Ahr who sang, drank and danced to celebrate the arrival of Vintage 2017.