Melbourne Food & Wine Festival

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It was a wet and grey morning today, but that didn’t put us off continuing with our plans to go to the Food & Wine Festival on the Southbank. We packed up our wet weather gear and Jo used her usual trick of lining her Ugg boots with plastic bags and we caught the tram into town.

We bought tickets to enter the Farm Yard tasting area, and then all tastings were free. There was a variety of food and drink on offer so we decided to go with the sensible plan of starting with the food stalls before trying out the wines and beers on offer. We worked our way around each stall trying breads, relishes, pates, chocolates, puddings, olive oils, curry sauces and spices. Then it was time to move on to the wine and beer. We started at a local beer stall which started only a year ago and only has 1 full time employee so far. Next we made our way around the wine stalls. The rain had really started to come down by now and the grassed area was turning into a muddy swamp, so we just hopped from stall to stall trying each of the wines that they had on offer. We did stock up on some more food mid-way through the day, trying out a local Pork Pie and Calamari.

We met a lot of the winery owners and heard the stories of how they started up and learnt a bit more about the wine making process. A lot of the wineries were fairly small operations started by retired couples who were looking for a hobby which has grown into a new business! 4 and a half hours later the stalls were told to finish serving, luckily we were at the Little Creatures stall when they were told to stop serving and the friendly bar tender opened up a new cider and beer and filled up our glasses to the top as a farewell drink!

It hadn’t stopped raining all afternoon so by 5pm we were soaked through. We caught the tram back to Richmond, picked up a DVD on the way and went home to dry off!

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