Wine 101- Wine Education Classes

Upper Reach Winery is such a beautiful place to go and a beautiful experience. We have been buying Wines regularly for a few years now and they are always delicious. We have also done a couple of the Wine classes which were such fun and very interesting. The Restaurant serves above average food. And we have taken friends there also, and they loved the food. There is a beautiful outdoor Pizza area under a huge gumtree. For people who love to walk, there is a beautiful walk on the property, along the river We can’t recommend this beautiful Winery highly enough. If you’re in the Swan Valley it’s a must to try.

Laura charged as $100 +$50 an hour for her expertise. She was nowhere to be found. We pay $150 plus 20% gratuity an hour for essentially a driver. She made reservations for us and thats it. That's no knowledge sharing or nothing. You could get the same experience going to the wineries yourself. We are paying over $900 for a driver got 5 hours!

We thoroughly enjoyed our morning doing the Wine 101 course with friends of ours. Stephen was a wonderful guide. He has great knowledge and was very informative, but was also relaxed and easy going, with a fun sense of humour. We enjoyed the tasting experience very much, and feel that the course helped deepen our understanding and appreciation of wine and how to pair it with food. Upper Reach have some great wines! We went on to enjoy a delicious lunch in the Upper reach restaurant, topped off with a terrific Tempranillo (highly recommend this!). A relaxed wander down to the Swan River and through the vineyards was a great way to end a delightful experience. Thanks to the warm and welcoming team in the wine tasting particularly. We will certainly be back!

We really enjoyed our morning, taking part in the Wine Education 101 class, after a breakfast at the restaurant for a family group of 6. None of us are 'wine experts', apart from knowing what we like and what we don't, so Steven's approach of starting with some ordinary everyday tastes before moving onto wines themselves helped us feel comfortable with our lack of expertise. Then, as we moved on to the basics of tasting beyond 'sniff/swirl/sip', the small techniques as well as the prepared 'handouts' of a 'tasting wheel' to help identify flavours and a page for our own notes were really helpful, too. A really good morning, definitely 'value for money', no condescending 'wine conneisur' talk and some extra knowledge to take away with me. I must pay more attention to what I'm actually tasting now! Oh - and Upper Reach's wines are well worth tasting, too. Alan

A fun and informative class! The guide was wonderful and engaging, and the experience was very relaxed while still learning a lot. Lots of tips and methods for tasting wine that will be helpful and easy to apply in everyday life. Really learned what we like in wine which will make it easier to buy well in the future!

Great experience, lovely walk around the vineyard with a glass of wine in hand! Then into the working parts of the winery to try wines straight from the tanks and compare them with their bottled counterparts. All this followed by a lovely lunch in the restaurant. Perfect.

What a wonderful way to learn more about wine appreciation instead of just drinking it and never giving it another thought. Loved the plate with all the items you could sniff to identify the flavour you were trying to identify in the wine. The atmosphere was great and the presentation fantastic. The meal afterwards soaked up all the wine and was top notch.

An excellent experience. 🍷 Stephen was knowledgeable,informative and funny. Can’t wait for the next one.

The tasting was great and gave us a good appreciation of different wines and how they are made. The lunch was superb and was a great way to finish a marvellous day.

My wife purchased two tickets to the 101 Wine Education Class back in November as a Christmas gift to each other. At the time, I thought what a wonderful idea, as it's always hard to find gifts for each other after 31 consecutive years of Christmas's, Birthday's and Anniversaries together. Whilst I was originally pleased with the gift idea, as anything to do with Wine and the wealth of knowledge there is to learn about it has always been of interest to me, what I didn't factor in was just how much of a family owned and run business Upper Reach is, and the service standard and presentation of the property is surely testament to owners who obviously take a great deal of pride in what they do. Our 90+ minute Education Class, more affectionately referred to on the day as more of an appreciation than an education (although I was of the opinion it was both) involved the tasting, evaluation and discussion of a vast array of both Red and White wines. Steve, our Education Class host and highly trained wine guru, delivered what our party of 4 wine lovers felt was a highly informative, relaxed and entertaining session, and I sensed that the rest of the group, approximately 15-16, felt the same way. The wines we tasted were fabulous, and the accompanying info sheets and character charts used to assess each variety, together with the contrast sample pots of fruits/minerals/soil etc we all used to prepare our senses prior to smelling and tasting each wine, were a great learning tool in themselves. After our session with Steve, we were escorted to the Dining area of the winery. where we enjoyed a beautiful lunch, which if included in the booked activity, included a generous tasting plate which was more than enough to satisfy two people (you can choose from 3 different Platters) followed by a good selection of freshly made desserts. Of course, having just sampled many of Upper Reach's wines as part of the education class, I couldn't not order a glass to compliment my meal. The icing on the proverbial cake for our party of four however, was the outstanding setting in which we enjoyed our Lunch together, seated on the outdoor terrace verandah, which is elevated above the rear lawn area (which is used for live music concerts in Feb/Mar each Summer) with a West facing aspect overlooking the immaculate Vineyard, as it sprawled across the landscape to join the banks of the upper reaches of the Swan River. We did two more things as we departed this newly discovered little gem in our own backyard in the Swan Valley..... we collected our complimentary bottle of wine from Steve at the cellar door, and then we made a pact together that we would return to Upper Reach in the very near future. 10/10 for the 101.