Is this Australia’s most underrated wine region?
Ditch the crowds of the popular Yarra and Hunter valleys for this hidden gem where the food and wine is matched by generous hospitality.
The first time I went to King Valley was in 2009 with two bikes in the back of the car. It was a last-minute summer road trip and my husband and I knew nothing about the region in northeastern Victoria except it had a decent rail trail.
We came across Dal Zotto Wines on day one and hastily ditched our bikes for a more leisurely exploration of food and wine. I still remember the constant clinking of the bottles of prosecco against our discarded bikes on the three-hour car journey back to Melbourne.
What we had stumbled upon 15 years ago was a wine region with a fascinating history dating back to 1889; a past that encompasses a gold rush, tobacco farms and, more recently, a love of food and wine shared by Italian families that immigrated to the area after World War II. King Valley is now considered the home of Australian prosecco.
It has 19 cellar doors, a dozen eateries, including a hatted restaurant, gourmet food producers and a growing number of luxury accommodation offerings. Yet it still remains unknown to many oenophiles, who instead go to the more established Yarra Valley, which attracts over four million visitors a year compared with King Valley’s 590,000.
“It really is a hidden gem,” says Kate Brown, a fourth-generation member of the Brown Brothers family, which has been making wine here since 1889. “It has this beautiful natural setting and climate, and it is not about the crowds here. If you go to the Yarra or the Hunter, you really can’t get into it; there are people everywhere trying to taste wine. Here, you can take a step back, relax and unwind and really enjoy the region, the food and the scenery.”
“Once you come here, you will return,” adds Christian Dal Zotto, second generation of the Dal Zotto family, which planted the first prosecco grapes in Australia in 1999.
“It is a little piece of Italy in the high country of Victoria. There have been Italian migrants here since 1956 and we are all family businesses who work together. When you are sitting in our trattoria eating antipasto with a glass of prosecco in your hand, overlooking the vines and the mountains, how could you not come back?”
The best place to start any exploration of King Valley is at Brown Brothers in Milawa. It is where the first vines were planted 135 years ago and it is also the easiest entry point coming from the Hume Highway up from Melbourne or down from Sydney.
The Browns arrived in the area when George Harry Brown, a 22-year-old law clerk from Scotland, decided to seek his fortune in the Victorian gold rush. He came to Beechworth, about 30km north of Milawa, but soon realised his prospecting skills were below par and instead turned to farming.
“He was a very bright guy so he dated the young lady running the school in Milawa, Rebecca Graham, and her father actually owned the property that the winery is on now,” explains Kate Brown. “It was their son John Francis Brown who made the first wine in 1889. The first wine was produced in the barn built in the 1860s by Rebecca’s father, also an immigrant, who built it with a Canadian- style roof so the snow would run off. It has only snowed in Milawa twice since then.”
The Browns continued more traditional farming (cattle, sheep and fruit orchards) until the 1970s when table wine became more popular in Australia thanks to the influx of post-war Italian immigrants.
Skip ahead a generation, under the winemaking leadership of grandson John Graham Brown and his brothers Peter, Ross and Roger, to 1980 when the winery started exporting to Britain and opened a cellar door and tasting room.
Meanwhile, about 40km south on Wangaratta-Whitefield Rd, along the winding King River, a number of Italian families had established farms near Cheshunt. Among them were the Dal Zottos, with Otto Dal Zotto emigrating with his parents from the northern Italian town of Valdobbiadene in 1967, and the Pizzinis.
Roberto Pizzini came from Trentino in the Italian Alps with his wife Rosetta in 1956. They were attracted to Victoria’s alpine region – Mt Buller is only 100km away – because it reminded them of home. They also all grew tobacco on their respective farms.
“The rolling hills of King Valley and the pristine waters of the King River really resonated with them,” says Natalie Pizzini, Roberto’s granddaughter. “The family had three small share farms but the decline of tobacco in the 1970s meant that Mum and Dad decided to move on to something else. They were thinking about growing blueberries when my dad, Alfredo, met with Ross and Peter Brown, who suggested that he grow grapes for them instead. They had a huge impact and changed what my family farmed. If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”
Alfredo grew grapes for Brown Brothers until the late ’80s. He then shifted his focus and planted Italian varietals such as sangiovese and nebbiolo, releasing his own wine in 1994. “Yarra Valley has chardonnay, Barossa Valley has shiraz and so King Valley needed to do something different,” says Natalie. “My dad always talked about how King Valley needed to have a niche to compete, and that was doing Italian varieties that no one else was doing.”
Another Italian grape variety, prosecco, made its way into King Valley when it was planted by Otto Dal Zotto. Like Roberto Pizzini, he had grown tobacco until the ’80s when Otto and his wife Elena started Dal Zotto Wines. In 2004, they released the first Australian prosecco.
“He had grown up with it in Italy and thought it would suit the growing conditions of King Valley,” says Michael Dal Zotto. Otto then shared the grape variety with Brown Brothers and it released its first prosecco a few years later.
By 2009, the arterial running through the region was dubbed Prosecco Road and it now has 72ha of prosecco vines, accounting for 64 per cent of all of the grape’s plantings in Australia.
The other key ingredient in King Valley – entirely unsurprising given the Italian heritage – is good food using locally grown produce. At Dal Zotto, the trattoria dishes up delicious wood-fired margarita pizza topped with buffalo mozzarella and Elena’s pickled zucchini. At Pizzini Wines, Katrina teaches pasta making at her cooking school and sells passata made from tomatoes grown on site. The Pizzini family also owns and runs the nearby Mountain View Hotel.
“There is just so much great food here,” says Natalie. “You could have lunch at Chrismont winery restaurant at the upper end of King Valley, grab Nonna Josie’s cannoli at the cellar door at Politini Wines on the way through and then finish with a hamburger from Cheshunt General Store. Cathy does a great burger and you can have it with a glass of Pizzini sangiovese sitting by the King River.”
Good food is also in abundance at the Milawa end of King Valley. There is Milawa Cheese Company, launched in 1988 after founders David and Annie Brown tasted a soft blue cheese in northern Italy and decided to recreate it back home in Australia (known as Milawa Blue). Next door is Milawa Bread & Kitchen, which started when chef Adam Rivett did some experimental bread baking in the back kitchen of the cheese factory.
Both venues provide everything needed for a picnic plus preserves from King Valley Fine Foods, pork terrines from a producer in nearby Stanley and smoked trout from a farm in neighbouring Harrietville.
Back at Brown Brothers, they also recognise the perfect match that is food and wine, having opened their winery restaurant in 1996. “It was one of my dad’s great ideas after working for years in our cellar door,” says Kate. “Instead of just telling people what food went with our wines, show them.”
The restaurant is now run by executive chef Bodee Price and it has taken out multiple awards for its seasonal set menu, which is heavily influenced by what grows in the kitchen garden. Price’s five-course slow lunch showcases the ingredients in an exceptional way; there is deep-fried saltbush coated with salt and vinegar, raw scallop with fermented chilli, rocking skin and oyster leaf (that really does taste like oyster); and melt-in-your mouth eggplant with smoked yoghurt and harissa. And the crunchy, salty chocolate treat after dinner is unexpectedly delicious (Price doesn’t reveal what it is in case diners are deterred).
“I have never grown anything in my life before coming here,” says Price. “But the climate and the produce is amazing. I started going to farm gates and then thought there was enough space here at the winery so why not (plant) our own garden. It is now our focal point – we start with a vegetable from the garden and go from there.”
Price, who has worked all over the world, started at Brown Brothers four years ago, which makes him a newcomer given the history of the region. “I never saw myself settling down here but it is just so beautiful,” the chef says. “Now I don’t see myself going anywhere else.” He is like many of the families that came before him; he has found his new home.
“That is just King Valley,” explains Michael Dal Zotto. “It brings you in and really holds you. You feel immersed and you just don’t want to leave.”
In the know
Lancemore Milawa
Almost directly across the road from Brown Brothers, Lancemore Milawa could not be better located for the roll, I mean stroll, back after a five-course lunch. The luxury boutique hotel has 40 guestrooms and reopened last year after a multimillion-dollar refurbishment.
There is a distinctly Mediterranean feel to the design, with potted olive trees, black and white striped outdoor chairs next to a pool creating a perfect place to watch the sun go down behind the vineyards with a glass of prosecco in hand.
Brown Brothers
Cellar door is open daily 9am-5pm. Restaurant is open for lunch Thursday-Monday, 12pm-2pm. Bookings essential for both. Five-course degustation menu at $150 a person with matching wines. Snack menu available.
Pizzini Wines
Cellar door is open daily 10am-5pm. Katrina’s cooking classes include pasta and gnocchi making. Check the website for dates. There are two guesthouses on site.
Dal Zotto Wines
Cellar door is open daily 10am-5pm. Bookings essential. Trattoria is open for lunch 12pm-3pm Thursday-Sunday. The winery also has new luxury accommodation offerings.
Milawa Cheese Company
Tastings and sales open from 9.30am-4pm daily.
Milawa Bread & Kitchen
Bread baked onsite and coffee, pastries and
light meals to take away. Open from 8am-4pm daily.
Milanda Rout was a guest of Lancemore Milawa.
