Goulburn Valley's best wineries
Discover all that’s red, white and new in this picturesque Victorian region.
The phones are ringing off the hook at Mitchelton Hotel in Nagambie, 90 minutes’ drive north of Melbourne. Loitering in the lobby of napa leather couches and stone floors, where glass walls frame towering red gums beside the Goulburn River, I’m not fazed that staff are too busy to attend to me right away — I’m just happy to see regional Victoria in such demand.
The 58-room hotel is a newish addition to the pioneering Mitchelton Winery. Set up in 1969, Mitchelton dominates the Goulburn Valley wine region along with neighbouring Tahbilk, established 160 years ago and still making wines from its 1860 shiraz vinestock. Over a more modest 50 years, and with the welcome injection of funds from its current owner, caravan mogul Gerry Ryan, Mitchelton has become a destination in itself.
This Goulburn Valley winery's angular, whitewashed buildings designed by Robin Boyd and crowned by the bold, 55m Ashton Tower are now symbolic of Nagambie. Besides winery and hotel, there is an extensive cellar door, boutique spa, riverside pool, a well-regarded restaurant and providore, and one of Australia’s largest commercial galleries of Indigenous art. The picks of the accommodation are the four corner suites in muted tones and timbers with balcony views over vines and river, coffee machines, Bose speakers and no fewer than three flat-screen TVs.
Muse Restaurant is ideal for alfresco lunches by the riverbank (mind the honking guinea fowl) and cosy dinners warmed by a monumental fireplace. All the dishes, from river trout to coq au vin, are “made from scratch” using produce from Mitchelton’s kitchen garden and local producers, but the focus is firmly on the wines. Chief winemaker Andrew Santarossa presides over a suite of vintages from the entry-level Preece label to the signature Blackwood Park Riesling — the grapes hand-picked in the dead of night — and heavy-hitting shiraz hailing from nearby Heathcote. All are best appreciated atop the tower around sunset, gazing across river plains to the Strathbogie Ranges as kangaroos mooch in the vines below.
There’s more liquid refreshment on tap in town at Nagambie’s flash lakefront brewery and distillery. Head brewer and distiller Jamie Chesher creates five beers, two gins and a vodka made from single-vineyard chardonnay. The amber ale’s very enjoyable and the brown is rich and chocolatey. The secret is Coco Pops, Chesher reveals.
From Mitchelton, I drive southwest towards tiny Tooborac, a grazing area more recently gone to grapes. Chef-turned-vigneron Adam Foster’s Syrahmi vineyard commands a hillside strewn with sculptural granite boulders and veined with an acre of vines. Being higher up at 400m, the fruits at this Goulburn Valley winery take longer to ripen, enriching characters of violets and graphite. “My aim is to make wines that are uniquely Australian,” says Foster, “and this is the holy grail — granite and shiraz.”
Next door is McIvor Farm Foods, Belinda and Jason Hagan’s 220ha permaculture pig farm featuring old breed animals. More than 1000 Berkshire and Hampshire pigs feast on tasty crops and forest fruits including fig, chestnut, oak and mulberry. “They love it,” says Belinda, a former Weekly Times Farmer of the Year. “And I think it must influence the quality of our pork because people keep telling us it’s getting better and better.”
A new farm-gate shop, opened this side of lockdown, means the Hagans can cure and sell products straight from the farm.
It’s about a 20-minute drive north to Heathcote, where the modest main street belies the district’s reputation for stunning wines raised in Cambrian-era soils. The trademark type is shiraz but Heathcote also does a fine line in cab sav, merlot, riesling, viognier and more, so it’s sensible to make a first stop at The Wine Hub. This country enoteca offers $11 tastes of two dozen regional wines to prime the palate before exploring the area’s 30-plus cellar doors.
Or you can head straight to the wineries of the Mount Camel Range. Sleek new cellar doors and pioneer varietals make this subregion a smart choice for astute wine tourists. There's more to Goulburn Valley wineries than meets the eye.
I start at Vinea Marson where fourth-generation winemaker Mario Marson proves an enthusiastic guide to his Italian-spirited vintages. In the rustic tin-shed-and-stone cellar door (with bocce pitch) he introduces me to Grazia, a blend of pinot bianco, malvasia, friulano and picolit, named after his mother. And a friulano because, being from Friuli, it’s in his blood. His other Italian specialties include sangiovese, nebbiolo and barbera, but you don’t need to be familiar with the grapes to appreciate the vino. As Marson says: “If it’s well made, any wine is good wine, no matter the variety.”
At the top of a rise on the Mount Camel Range, Peregrine Ridge’s new cellar door looms like a glasshouse cantilevered over a vine-striped valley. From the deck, on a clear day, you can see Mount Buller. Graeme Quigley and Sue Kerrison offer tastings of seven wines, all shiraz although two are exceptional sparklings. Some are fermented in Kerrison’s preferred American oak for “voluptuous, sweet and spicy” shiraz. Quigley prefers French oak for more savoury wines.
Over the camel’s hump lies Tellurian, another striking cellar door that opened between lockdowns last June. The bold, angular building sits in a natural amphitheatre at the end of a dirt-track drive edged with eucalypts and sheep. Inside is an elegant, modern salon overlooking the barrel room. Excellent shiraz is a given; tastings also highlight Rhone-style grapes including Marsanne, viognier and a luscious roussanne, plus Italian fiano and nero d’avola. All have been chosen for their affinity to the soil and conditions on Ian and Daniel Hopkins’s organic vineyard.
Ian explains the region extends 80km from north to south and has been producing wine for about 50 years. There’s an annual calendar of events headlined by a wine show in August and an October wine and food festival. I’m spending the night with his next-door neighbours Peder Rosdal and Lionel Flutto at The Cellars at Heathcote II, comprising four sunset-facing cabins of high design and creature comforts, including private stocked cellars clad in mortared stone. The Cellars’ bucolic setting features box ironbark forests and golden fields where alpacas guard woolly sheep stained red by the rich soils. The rammed earth and rusted steel villas are tucked behind a grove of 1000 olive trees. In 2019, Rosdal and Flutto added a cellar door with a ceiling of interwoven barrel staves to showcase their European-leaning wines, aged for two years in French oak for extra finesse. Their calling cards are Bordeaux blends and a super-Tuscan style sangiovese cabernet.
More to the story
Mix up the road trip by heading home via the Calder Highway and visiting two foodie spots in Harcourt and Castlemaine. The Harcourt Produce and General Store, opened in late 2019 by Danish expat Annette Larsen Rae, is a bistro, deli, takeaway, wine bar and greengrocer stocked overwhelmingly with Larsen Rae’s own produce. In Castlemaine, French cheesemakers Ivan and Julie Larcher sell artisan cow’s milk products at Long Paddock Cheese, and will soon announce 2021 classes at The Cheese School, a new addition to the foodie hub at The Mill.
In the know
Room-only rates at Mitchelton Hotel from $329; suites from $529. Villas at Heathcote II from $285 a night ($250 if staying two nights), including breakfast provisions.
Most cellar doors open at weekends; other times by appointment.
Kendall Hill was a guest of Visit Victoria.
This story was originally published in March 2021 and has since been updated.
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