Mount Pleasant, Hunter Valley: a new type of cellar door experience

A legendary Hunter Valley cellar door, remade as a sensory experience. Is this the future for wineries?

Inviting: inside Mount Pleasant

From some angles, it could be a gallery showcasing significant photographic artworks. Bill Henson, Tracey Moffatt, Rosemary Laing… you’ll soon be weaving around the leather chesterfields and intimate nooks at Mount Pleasant winery to get a better look at these large framed photos because they’re impossible to ignore. On another wall a television flickers and, being in a vineyard, I expect it might show the grape harvest or historical clips, but it’s playing video artworks that cause you to stop, sit and stare. But we’re not here for the art.

On our table is a selection of delicious tasting plates from the kitchen of “hatted” chef Kyle Whitbourne: burrata draped with sweet bombs of blistered roasted grapes, moreish charcuterie, perfectly ripened cheeses. But we’re not here for the food either. The art, the menu, the casual grandeur of this room with its big open fire and soaring timber ceiling is a backing band for the main act. The wine. Welcome to the post-lockdown cellar door remade as a sensory experience.

The table’s set at Mount Pleasant

It’s common now for wineries to require bookings and payment upfront for set tastings, and to make it worth your while they’re reimagining the offering. This sort of pre-planning might go against the grain of the wandering wine lover seeking the serendipity of random discoveries but the realities of pandemic trading meant guests had to be seated, numbers controlled, bookings made, and this more civilised model has stuck. Goodbye big-drinking quaffers hogging the bar, having their fill and leaving without a thank you, let alone a purchase.

Interesting art is part of the charm at Mount Pleasant

A premium “experience” makes sense at a spot like Mount Pleasant, a serious winery established 101 years ago by Maurice O’Shea, one of Australia’s greatest winemakers, in the Hunter Valley, Australia’s oldest wine region. On a bright blue winter’s day, with a family of bellbirds tinkling like wind chimes in the distance, chief winemaker Adrian Sparks speaks with a note of awe about the historical significance of this vineyard, now entrusted to him. Up there, he says, pointing to some gnarly naked vines snuggling up to a thickly treed range, are shiraz vines planted by cattle farmer Charles King in 1880, four decades before O’Shea founded Mount Pleasant. Over there is Australia’s oldest pinot noir vineyard.

O’Shea loved to entertain, Sparks says, and this spirit has been channelled in the gloriously renovated homestead-cum-cellar-door which brings to mind a country club without the stuffiness. It’s a big space with a wine store, members’ lounge and public indoor and outdoor spaces that invite you to settle in at a table or lounge and work through a semillon flight or shiraz spectacular. Where once we might have dropped in unannounced, tried a couple of wines and left, we lose an afternoon here, eating, tasting, eyeing the art, admiring this beautiful rural setting.

Inside Mount Pleasant

The homestead theme is continued at our accommodation at Corunna Station, once an important wool operation established in 1880, the year those old shiraz vines were planted at Mount Pleasant. About 20 minutes’ drive north of Pokolbin, there are three self-contained options on the 40ha property – The Cooks House, which sleeps four; The Country House, which fits 12; and our country chic pad The Homestead, a three-bedroom beauty featuring two luxe bathrooms with clawfoot baths, and a kitchen to inspire even the most reluctant cook. A blazing log fire greets us, a nice touch in a house that’s comfortable and stylish with tasteful nods to its farming history.

In The Homestead at Corunna Station. Picture: Good Thanks Media

The smallest details are covered off: I go looking for a Bluetooth speaker and find one in the kitchen, there’s plenty of dry wood (and instructions) to keep the log fire burning, the big comfortable king beds have proper linen and all around are little piles of magazines and books, plus DVDs under the telly. Outside, big verandas furnished with chairs and a full dining table look out over paddocks inhabited by ducks, shy iridescent parrots, and a large mob of kangaroos that double as entertainers. Wineries and restaurants line the Hermitage Road between here and Pokolbin and two nights is not enough time to explore the area.

Bedroom at Corunna Station

It’s been a tough few years in the Hunter, with drought and then floods bookending the 2019-20 black summer fires that sent smoke clouds over the valley, ruining the harvest. But the region’s credentials as a food and wine haven have only grown during the lockdown years – a local friend sends through a list of half a dozen “must-try” restaurants and wineries doing interesting things. “And you’ve got to get to Wollombi,’’ she says. “Oh, and Hungerford butchery in Branxton…” Her tips keep coming. It might take a year or two but we’ll work our way through that list.

Corunna Station

• Perfect for: Oenophiles, foodies.

• Must do: Book a wine tasting and try the tasting plates at Mount Pleasant, open Thursdays to Mondays (mountpleasantwines.com.au), a short drive from Pokolbin. Shiraz, chardonnay and semillon are regional specialties but there are more than 100 wineries in the Hunter so there’s opportunity to explore other varieties. The valley is surrounded by national parks ideal for bushwalking.

• Dining: Try the excellent Hunters Quarter for lunch in the Cockfighters Ghost vineyard at Pokolbin (set three-course menu, $110). EXP, Muse, Margan, Bistro Molines also come recommended. For breakfast, Fawk Foods in Pokolbin or Café Enzo in Peppers Creek Village.

• Getting there: The Hunter Valley is about two hours’ drive north of Sydney.

• Bottom line: Three-bedroom Homestead at Corunna Station, Belford, from $564 per night, two-night minimum.

corunnastation.com.au