Yarra Valley Cellar Doors

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With the offer of a chauffer driven tour of the Yarra Valey from our new flat mate Gavin, we were up nice and early and eager to educate our palates, although our chauffer was a little slow at getting started, still slightly dazed from his exploits the evening before! Without too much of a delay we were soon on the road and heading north out of town to the promise of free wine at the cellar doors!

We reached our first stop of the Rochford Winery in about an hour, and started enthusiastically tasting. The wine maker was very helpful, giving us a good grounding in the process of tasting, as well as talking us through each of the wines we tried in an attempt to educate our sensory awareness!

Next we went to Oakridge where we continued our education path of discovery in wine tasting with some amazing views. The last stop before lunch was one of Gavins favourites Yarra Yering. Again we were greeted by a slightly smaller scale winery, although the setting was fantastic, and the winery cat was popular with us posing for some photos.

We stopped for lunch at Train Trak, sharing some amazing fresh pizzas cooked in a wood burning oven, which helped by soaking up some of the wine we’d tasted and forgotten to spit out!

Our post lunch tour moved to the Yering Station which was on a much larger scale to the others, and the buildings and facilities were very impressive, with some amazing views to match their trophy cabinet full of awards.

Next we dashed to the De Bortoli winery hoping to sneak in one last tasting. Fortunately it turns out they have twilight tastings during the summer, so we had plenty of time to indulge! This wine yard complimented its wine tastings with the opportunity of cheese tastings. By the time we’d had a couple of tastings we were nearly 9 hours in to our tour, so we (Jo) were starting to feel the effects, and as you can read our memory of the wines was a little light, although we did manage to find our way home with two bottles of wine and a cap for Jo!

Although we aren’t be able to recite a detailed description of each of our 100+ tastings and favourites, we can recommend this as a great day out, and the intention is for another day of tastings to feature on our travels, especially given most of them are free, and apparently the only way to learn more is to drink!

To end the day off and soak up some of the fun we treated ourselves to a curry from a Nepalese restaurant round the corner from the flat before sleeping the rest of the day off!

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Photos

Yarra Yerring Cat
He's a fan of wine too!