head to the shore: In the yellow beetle through the wine country, South Australia

A road trip is one of my favorite way of traveling. Cruising with a map across an unknown land and stopping where your heart desires to set up a tent or spend a night under an open sky. I have many road trips in my mind to realize yet in this life; Iceland, New Zealand, Ethiopia, Chile. TIME please?

As Susi loves old cars with personality she bought this '79 Volkswagen here in South Australia, dusted it off, got it fixed nicely and I reckon it is the only yellow beetle in the Adelaide region. We packed a few water bottles, a tripod for photo shooting and headed for one day cruising in the oldest Australian wine country - the Barossa Valley.

The wine industry of the Barossa Valley was founded by German settlers and most of the wineries carry German names like this one of the Schild family.

The Germans who arrived here in the 18th century were farmers and haven't had any experience with wine growing. After trying many types of farming they have decided that the warm, fertile valley is ideal for wine-making. First they focused on growing the Riesling, a German wine grape. Later other wine varieties were grown: Grenache, Chardonnay, Cabernet Savignon but the most famous one from Barossa is the red full bodied wine Shiraz.

We chatted with the antique store owner (those friendly Australians...) who is restoring a 100 years old shed on his land so it looks just as in old times. This kind of building would be most probably ignored and demolished in Europe but here a 100 years is a great amount of time and history.

We stopped in a few wineries for some wine tasting, some of them have a nice modern design.

Barossa Valley is home of the Australian, today global wine brand Jacobs Creek. A Bavarian immigrant planted in 1847 his first grape vines on the banks of the creek. Today Jacobs Creek wine is exported to over 60 countries around the world.