Beyond the cellar door
18 May 2018
What started out as a simple shopfront for many wineries soon morphed into restaurants – natural showcases for food and wine matching – but as tourism matures winemakers are seeking to make the cellar door experience more immersive. “All cellar doors in Australian pretty much offer the same thing, we have to lift the bar and give that truly behind the scenes experience and make people feel that little bit special,” says Ian Firth, manager brand engagement at Fowles Wines in Victoria.
Ultimate Wine Experiences Australia (UWEA) offers nearly 100 of these new experiences at various wineries around the country:
Wine and art: Moorilla Winery, Tasmania
Moorilla is on the grounds of Australia’s largest privately owned art gallery in the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Hobart.
On this experience you will catch the Mona ferry which is whimsically decorated with fake sheep to sit on and painted like cowskin, then explore the galleries of Mona for a few hours. At lunch you are taken to Mona’s restaurant for lunch paired with a Moorilla wine; then it’s off to a behind-the-scenes wine tour.
Backstage pass: Brown Brothers Victoria
On a family property in Milawa, northern Victoria, John Francis Brown started making wine 128 years ago in a barn surrounded by sheep and hay bales.
Now that barn has been restored as a grand entrance to the property.
The behind-the-scenes tour takes in the production process where you see piles of discarded wine skins, tour the experimental “wine kindergarten” and meet winemaker Katherine Brown hard at work. You finish at Patricia’s Table sitting down to a wine-matched that might include fried quail breast and terrine, apple kimchi, yuzu mayonnaise and peanuts to the soundtrack of acorns falling on the tin roof.
Cape to Vine: Vasse Felix, WA
Margaret River doesn’t just make great wines it has some of the most amazing coastal scenery in the world, so take a guided walk along the Cape to Cape Track, then when you have worked up an appetite, head to Vasse Felix for lunch.
Vasse Felix winery is one of the most awarded wineries in Australia and one of the first to discover how good Margaret River was for making wine.
Enjoy a paired lunch overlooking the property.
Learn to cook: Pizzini Wines, VIC
The Pizzinis, tobacco-farmers-turned-winemakers in the King Valley, have helped popularise Italian varietals like sangiovese and barbera and can also be credited with the meteoric rise of prosecco.
A morning cooking class, run by Katrina, is a staple of UWEA. The best cooking classes don’t just impart recipes, they impart knowledge and Katrina Pizzini’s A tavola Cooking School is full of tips and secrets that stay with you after the class has finished. We make silky tagliatelle, gnocchi and a deceptively simple Napoletana sauce that is now a staple for our pizzas and pasta at our place.
Game on: Fowles Wines, Victoria
On this tour you will visit the winery main winery operations a short drive away and if you come during vintage you can play a game of “follow the pipe” from crusher to barrel. You can taste the future vintages in their infancy; sweet pungent glasses of grape juice that only a winemaker could love, but which will eventually become the sort of wine that made Fowles the first Victorian winery to win the Great Australian Shiraz Challenge trophy for Australia’s Best Shiraz.
Fowles also offers a game experience that showcases they wineries unique take on food and wine matching. “What sets us apart is our food and wine matching philosophy,” says Firth. “We are the first winery in the world to actually blend a wine to specifically match game food.”
Wine experiences are booked through Ultimate Wine Experiences Australia and you can choose from over 20 wineries across Australia; ultimatewineryexperiences.com.au
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