Taste of Hunter Valley high life

ECLECTIC cuisine, wine and spa treatments make for a luxurious weekend for Chanel Parratt ahead of the area's major culinary festival in June.

Hunter Valley escape

LET me preface what I'm about to write by saying I was driving a Porsche.

The fact that I missed the exit for the Hunter Valley by a good 15 minutes had little to do with my ability to work the sat nav and everything to do with the fact that I was having too much fun.

Carrera, Boxster, Cayenne and the cockpit-for-four Panamera I drove them all. If you're doing the Hunter food and wine festival, do it in style.

Muse Kitchen at Keith Tulloch Wine is all about exceeding expectations, yours and their own. 

Just 12 months after opening their first Muse Restaurant at Hungerford Hill winery, Megan Rhoades-Brown and husband, Troy, picked up their first chef's hat.

For the husband-and-wife team this is very much "a dream come true". 

"We have a hat, we don't have children," Megan says. 

They've applied the same level of enthusiasm, attention to detail and professionalism to the smaller and less formal setting of Muse Kitchen, which opened last October. 

The whimsical free-range chicken terrine with heirloom carrot, soft herbs and fig jam presented beautifully and the slow-cooked Milly Hill lamb with green apple and mint gel made for a faultless lunch.

Originally our cortege of Porsches was to meet Lisa McGuigan at Lisa McGuigan wines but a just-as-eager eastern brown had the same idea. 

Instead, we talked wine among the vines of Brian and Fay's (Lisa's parents) vineyard, McGuigan Wines. 

Larger than life Lisa is a fourth-generation winemaker and the best advocate for her brand. 

Along with head winemaker Liz Jackson, I'd found two women who weren't afraid of breaking convention. 

"I wanted to create a wine that women would feel comfortable with. What is it about wines for women and flowery looking labels," Lisa says. 

The clean platinum strip across the Lisa McGuigan label says it all modern, confident and masculine. 

"I take lots of risks but that's why I get up every day," she says. 

Her Sparkling Moscato Noir was one such risk, running moscato over inky cabernet sauvignon skins. 

Imbued with delicate pink, the moscato is a paradox sitting in the masculine packaging but it's paying dividends, visually and in taste.

Has she had any misses? Of course. A cease and desist letter from a French winery over her then-Hermitage Lane label (where her vines were located) was almost the end. 

Thankfully, Lisa's experiences there, and again at Tempus Two, have helped create one of the most influential personalities in modern wine production. 

Down the road, the Hunter Valley Cheese Company runs complimentary cheese talks and tastings. Here I learnt about specialty cheese production as well as how to pick really beautiful, ripe cheese back at home. 

Managing director and cheese specialist Rose Lambert walked me through the cheesemaking process. Manufactured on site, the preservative-free range follows traditional cheesemaking recipes with a few Hunter innovations. 

They make the most of local grapevine prunings, which are then burned and prepared by their cheesemakers to produce Australia's only Grapevine Ash Brie. 

The intense creamy flavour derived from a traditional French recipe with the sweet mushroom aroma from the vines has resulted in an award-winning cheese. 

A pre-dinner tasting at Majors Lane proved a worthy detour before the main event. 

The Lovedale Smokehouse cafe is attached to the main restaurant. Here I found the perfect wine accompaniments smoked chicken, duck and air-dried wagyu beef. 

At dinner, their award-winning Majors Lane semillon paired with the steamed scallops, water chestnut and ginger gow gees perfectly. 

The American owners of the award-winning Chateau Elan in Braselton, Georgia, Don and Nancy Panoz, have created one of Australia's finest golf and spa resorts, Chateau Elan at The Vintage. Its Greg Norman-designed course is regarded as one of Australia's best. 

My stay at Chateau Elan wasn't complete without a little pampering, so the next morning I made time for a relaxing Swedish massage. 

You'll find no fewer than 17 treatment rooms at the resort spa and free access to the Hydrolounge is available to every spa guest. With plunge pools, a dry heat detox box, comfortable water-resistant lounges and fireplace for the cooler months, this is the perfect place to indulge in a little post-treatment wind-down. 

I like to drive but never more than the day I was behind the wheel of a charcoal Porsche 911 Carrera S Coupe. I felt powerful, safe and self-assured the Hunter was made for this. 

The quick drive to the Ogishi craft centre ended all too soon. 

Setsuko and her husband, Yutaka, were very much hands on as they guided me through my first glassblowing lesson. 

Glassblowing is physical work and although small in stature, Japanese-born Setsuko has won numerous awards and held a number of major exhibitions in Australia. 

Together they make a wonderful team, saving my masterpiece from certain death at least once and shaping its wonky edges turning, rolling and blowing the glass into symmetrical beauty. 

My blue-hued bowl now sits triumphant on my mantel at home. 

At lunch that day, I found it near impossible to pinpoint Margan's most impressive feature. 

Margan's restaurateur Lisa Margan said the winery's custom-built rammed-earth tasting room was chosen for its ability to maintain a consistent temperature (a great advantage for storing wine) as well as its good looks and acoustic qualities. 

"Rammed earth is made on site from our local white gravel," Lisa says. 

It's then mixed with sand, cement and silicone before it's condensed into the building's framework. 

"The Great Wall of China was made in much the same way, without the technology." 

Being manufactured on site and using local materials also helped reduce the winery's carbon footprint an important aspect to Lisa and her winemaker husband, Andrew, who are regarded as innovators in the winery and restaurant sustainability field. 

By far the prettiest dish I enjoyed in the Hunter was at Margan. Seared yellowfin tuna with piccalilli capers and white balsamic jelly. 

Although it was during the second course of crispy ballontine of chicken with chorizo, saffron potato, fennel and orange that I really fell in love. 

Margan's 2010 Barbera, not too savoury and not too sweet, was a fantastic wine match for the chicken. 

Food like this doesn't just happen. Lisa and Andrew had run the original, critically acclaimed Margan restaurant for 10 years before designing the building and 0.4ha kitchen garden at the new location from scratch. 

About 90 per cent of the restaurant's fruit and vegetables are sourced from the garden. 

What's more, Margan is certified with Green Table Australia as well as the WFA Entwine program, the first and only Hunter winery to receive certification in the program. 

---- The sixth annual Hunter Valley Wine and Food Month runs from June 1-30 with tastings and dinners at venues throughout the region. 

The author was the guest of Tourism NSW.

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HUNTER VALLEY

- Getting there

There are flights to Newcastle or it's BYO Porsche.

- Staying there

Stay at Chateau Elan in a Spa King room from $259/night. Price includes full buffet breakfast.

More: See porschecars.com.au
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