5 of the best cellar doors in the hunter valley
It is raining so hard that cars are pulling into shoulders, windscreen wipers are redundant and overtaking cars feel like you’re aquaplaning.
So when the F3 freeway from Sydney gives way to the Hunter Valley after a few hour’s drive, and the rain abates, it’s liberating enough to celebrate with a cellar door tasting.
The best three wineries in the Hunter:
Brokenwood: there’s an award winning Graveyard Vineyard Shiraz is classed is exceptional, that retails for around $250 and has won accolade after accolade.
Mount Pleasant: this vineyard gets both the Hunter classics right, with a blockbuster Semillon and Shiraz. You should be able to buy the Semillon young and citrus zesty at the cellar door, while you might have to be on a waiting list for the Shiraz.
Tyrrell’s: go here for the Semillon and Chardonnay. The Hunter is renowned for its young Semillon, but Tyrrell’s has a Vat 1 which is left to rest for five years and is considered Ausralia’s best.
Lake’s Folly: a boutique winery you’re likely to not have heard of before, it boasts one of Australia’s most loved Cabernets which can cellar for up to 20 years.
Krinklewood: this biodynamic winery deserves the plaudits, with a French aesthetic that suits its harvest, with delectable bottles of rose, shiraz, chardonnay and semillon. There are also resident peacocks.
In the cellar door, the drivers are easily identifiable by their spit buckets. Of course, the more cellar doors down, the more this strategy frays, led astray by the passenger’s ever more enthusiastic recommendations of pretty much everything on the tasting menu.
If, on the other hand, you want to flavour the full gambit of the Hunter’s more than a hundred cellar doors, do it by bicycle. It may start out wobbly if you’re a beginner and it will sure end wobbly thanks to the wine. Hunter Valley Cycling provides mountain bikes to your hotel.
Be warned though, country air and cycling conspire to ramp up your appetite. For dinner, try Redsalt restaurant at the Crowne Plaza. Hotel restaurants often disappoint, but a flow of local clientele confirms that this restaurant should be on your culinary agenda. The entrée of puff pastry topped with roasted beetroot, toasted hazelnuts, watercress and yoghurt labna sourced from local cheesemaker Binnorie Dairy.
Binnorie Dairy features on many menus in the Hunter, one restaurant where the dessert menu features a cheesecake made from their goat’s cheese. Have you ever wanted your cake and your cheese platter too? If so, this meal-ender is the answer. Every bite starts sweet on the palate and ends like you’ve just eaten goat’s cheese on a digestive biscuit.
Speaking of biscuits, there’s a gingerbread house to be seen at the Hunter Valley Gardens. One of the ten feature gardens is a storybook garden with a gingerbread house, Alice in Wonderland’s tea party and Humpty Dumpty on a wall is set to nursery rhymes on a speaker. Just try to resist the childhood nostalgia.
It is in this garden that it starts to rain. Luckily there is a seven-foot red-capped concrete mushroom to shelter underneath. As surreal as it sounds, that’s not the wine or the cheese talking. Go find it for yourself.
