Victoria’s best winery restaurants
Long leisurely meals are the order of the day at these fine diners attached to top-notch cellar doors.
The wine and dine pairings offered by this array of regional wineries will gladden the heart and satisfy the palate.
Mornington Peninsula
Ten Minutes by Tractor, Main Ridge
Named for the distance between its three founding vineyards, Ten Minutes By Tractor is the Mornington Peninsula’s premium cellar-door experience. It combines first-rate wines (especially its single-vineyard chardonnays and pinot noirs) with stunning architecture and excellent eating. The terrace is a fine spot for casual wine and cheese but serious gourmands should book into the stylish restaurant where five and seven-course tasting menus highlight peninsula produce. Perhaps Port Phillip Bay snapper with Dromana mussels and Oscietra caviar, or O’Connor short rib from neighbouring Gippsland served with foie gras and duck-fat onions. The phenomenal wine list favours cool-climate drops from home and abroad. Paired wines ($185-$250) come with the cleverest food matchings I’ve experienced.
Rutherglen
Jones Winery
Established the same year as Rutherglen, 1860, Jones Winery brings new-age, French-style wines and food to a historic cellar door. Bordeaux-trained Mandy Jones largely ignores the region’s reputation for fortifieds and instead crafts elegant table wines such as her flagship LJ shiraz-grenache and the Rhone-style marsanne-roussanne. She’s also created a Lillet-style aperitif, Correll, which makes a lovely spritz. Europe-trained chef Briony Bradford plates up two-and-three-course menus rich in thought, technique and taste. In early-settler surrounds of brick and corrugated iron, diners tuck into local lamb sweetbreads with fig and cauliflower, paperbark-roasted duck breast with cherries, and a “peach Melba” made with Indigo Valley lamb.
Yarra Valley
No. 7 Healesville
This urban winery in the heart of Healesville pairs Spike Frazer’s innovative wines, and those of vignerons he admires, with accomplished Mexican cuisine. No. 7 is a former furniture factory reimagined as French bistro, complete with gilt mirrors and chandeliers, and a working winery and barrel room out the back. Wines by the glass complement the day’s menu; try a kingfish ceviche laced with fragrant herbs with a central Victorian riesling, or a spicy flauta tortilla stuffed with chicken and Oaxacan cheese with a Loire Valley chardonnay-chenin blanc. Or leave the decision-making to the experts and order the four-course chef’s selection with keenly selected wines.
Goulburn Valley
Muse at Mitchelton Estate, Nagambie
Mitchelton, caravan mogul Gerry Ryan’s mega-winery at Nagambie, about 100 minutes’ drive from Melbourne, has evolved into a destination in its own right. Come for Robin Boyd’s modernist architecture, stay for the new-ish 58-room hotel (grab a corner suite if you can) and definitely book a table at Muse. At this hacienda-style restaurant beside the Goulburn River, regional produce, such as river trout, Euroa wagyu, organic veg and smoked meats from Seymour, meets Mitchelton’s range of fine wines, including the signature Blackwood Park riesling. Stroll the grounds after lunch (mind the guinea fowl) and browse the subterranean gallery of large-format paintings by leading Australian Indigenous artists.
King Valley
Brown Brothers, Milawa
The Brown family first planted vines at Milawa in northeast Victoria in 1885. Today, the vast vineyard operation produces more than 30 wines, including top-selling proseccos and moscatos, but they haven’t lost sight of good country living. At hatted restaurant Patricia’s, diners overlook established gardens while grazing on Bodee Price’s nine-plate menu starting with “garden-waste oil” and house-made sourdough. There follows a flurry of plates showcasing just-picked produce, house-cured meats and pickles, then maybe a lamb backstrap crusted with carrot-top pesto and Meredith goat’s curd. Price’s finishing flourish, a chocolate-coated shard of chicken skin spiced with mountain pepperberry, is typical of his resourceful, original cooking.
Yarra Valley
Oakridge Wines, Coldstream
The restaurant at Oakridge, a modernist glass rod anchored above syrah vines with blue-sky views out to the Yarra Ranges, makes a nice analogy for head chef Aaron Brodie’s cosmopolitan cuisine drawn from the valley’s soils. His three and four-course menus open with a parade of small plates capturing the harvest and kitchen ingenuity (late-summer tomatoes dressed in miso, smoky duck morcilla) followed by pasta – maybe a freshly milled trenette with garden pesto – then main; if you’re lucky, a smoked Yarra Valley trout smothered in herby gremolata. Of course, there are refined wines to suit each course; the list contains four decades of Oakridge vintages including the standout single-block wines.
Henty
Basalt Wines, Killarney
Located midway between the 12 Apostles and historic Port Fairy, Basalt Wines is an outlier of the huge Henty winemaking region in southwest Victoria. Shane Clancey’s farming forebears came to the region from County Cork in the 19th century but he’s the first to try his hand at grapes, producing award-winning riesling, pinot gris and noir, and tempranillo. The 50-seat cafe offers indoor and outdoor dining among basalt stone walls, Victorian hardwoods and a bar made from a recycled bowling alley. Mediterranean-accented dishes canvas grilled chorizo, gin-cured Tasmanian trout and smoked Skipton eel with Tower Hill potatoes.
Geelong
Shadowfax Wines, Werribee
The Werribee heritage precinct, 40 minutes from Melbourne’s CBD, has something for everyone. History and architecture at the grand Werribee Mansion, botanical beauty at the mansion and neighbouring state rose garden. And terrific wine – and food – at Shadowfax. The cellar door serves formal tastings in its underground barrel room or more casually at outdoor tables beside the grenache and mataro vines. Wine flights cover Geelong riesling and pinot gris, a (scrumptious) chardonnay from the Macedon Ranges and a nebbiolo from the Pyrenees, ideally enjoyed with sophisticated snacks such as oxtail croquettes and fried scamorza. Mains run to seafood linguine with Calabrian XO sauce, confit chicken saltimbocca and barramundi.
Yarra Valley
Tarrawarra Estate, Yarra Glen
Tarrawarra’s modern art gallery, a rammed-earth citadel above serene gardens, is the Yarra Valley’s premier cultural institution. Its wines are among Australia’s best-regarded chardonnays and pinot noirs. And its restaurant is one of regional Victoria’s finest. Head chef Joel Alderdice marries talent and taste in three and four-course menus set to the seasons. Expect springy focaccia followed by, for example, hand-chopped beef tartare with cured egg yolk and a tarragon-dusted potato, chicken ballotine with mushrooms and spaetzle, and an impeccable tart of caramel, jasmine and shaved macadamia.
Mornington Peninsula
Rare Hare, Merricks North
Jackalope, the high-concept art hotel that turned the Mornington Peninsula into Melbourne’s most desirable weekend escape, has a rustic heart. It’s home to pioneering winery Willow Creek, where winemaker Geraldine McFaul is known as the queen of chardonnay (her pinot gris is also great), and to Rare Hare, a barrel-room bistro of brick floors, central fireplace and glass walls framing the vines that grew your grape juice. Blackbutt refectory tables encourage communal dining on seasonal dishes such as dill waffle with whipped cod roe and blue scampi caviar, and Otway pork cutlet with greengage plum and togarashi. Pricing is reasonable – snacks under $10, staples under $20 and mains to share for about $45 – while the drinks list covers everything from cocktails and local beers to wines from Willow Creek and fellow Victorian producers.
Kendall Hill travelled to some regions courtesy of Visit Victoria.
