Stoneleigh No. 50

On Saturday, I had concocted a really weird activity for us to do. Usually when I plan something that I'm not sure T will like, I talk it up or just act really confident that it will be fun. But this one was so weird that even I wasn't sure what to expect or whether I would like it. But T put on his good sport face and went along with it! 

This mystery event was called Stoneleigh No. 50. Stoneleigh is the name of a winery in New Zealand, and 50 is the house number where the winery was hosting this promotional event. In a nutshell, the house had been filled with plants and nature-y things. And not just a few plants: so many that the house looked abandoned and the rooms looked like they had been overtaken by nature. 

It's a bit hard to explain in words, which is why I didn't know what to expect when we went. But it was free so I signed us up for a 12:30 tour, and there we were! 

Our "tour" was a 25 minute guided walk through the house, which is a lovely old terrace style house in the oldest part of Sydney. 

Standing outside also gave us a sneak peek at some of the rooms we were going to get to see.

Then we got to go in, and that's when it turned pretty cool. Our guide explained to us that each room in the house was designed to represent the different natural aspects of different Stoneleigh wines. And in each room we'd get a taste of the wine represented there. Hard to go wrong with that!

The main hallway had big stones and grapevines it it. There was a lot of talk about how the stones in the ground at the Stoneleigh vineyard contribute to the mineral taste of the wine, but I was sneaking looks in to the other rooms and missed most of these fancy details. 

The first room up was the bedroom, which was meant to represent the floral aspects of the savignon blanc. Again, I didn't 100% pay attention to the tasting notes, because I was checking out all the different things to look at in the room. Like the mattress that just had tons of flowers growing out of it, and the little shoes by the fireplace with the same. It was hard to take it all in. 

And then it was on to the living room. This room was cool because there was actual grass as the floor, which kind of played with my head a bit. There was also a lot going on in there, with some herbs and veggies growing on the dining table that we could taste with that room's wine. And it was borderline creepy: with chairs overturned and dirt on the piano, it definely looked the most "abandoned" of any of the rooms. 

It was about at this point that we learned this house had recently been sold for a cool $4.5 million. While the owners wait for approvals for all the renovations they want to do, they agreed the house could be used for this event. It's hard for me to imagine a scenario where I would spend 4 million dollars on a house and then let it be filled with dirt, but I suppose this will never be a real decision I will be faced with. 

Next up was the bathroom, which I would have loved with or without the plants. It was just so old fashioned and quaint!

Last up was a trip to the cellar/basement, which was the "earthiest" room of all. I snapped some pics of the stairs going up as we went down too. 

The cellar theme was dirt and mushrooms, and it was cool and dark in there. By this time we'd tasted four rooms worth of wine, so I was really appreciating all those dirt tones in the wine. 

And then we were done! We were welcomed to hang out in the back garden to drink wine and enjoy the views for as long as we wanted. 

We left with gift bags of wine and feeling slightly surreal. But we also both agreed that the gamble had paid off and it was indeed a very fun activity!