The high notes
Wednesday, 10am: Something stinks in Albury, and as I walk out of the airport’s terminal building and towards the Avis office I realise it’s me. We are well off the height of summer, where temperatures here get into the 40s, but I’m dressed for Wellington spring, not New South Wales border town spring, and a change of clothes is needed. I put on a clean T-shirt, pick up a rental car and point it vaguely in the direction of the Victorian High Country, across the Murray River. Then I turn on the sat-nav system and point the car in the proper direction and I’m off, down the Hume Freeway. 12pm: I arrive in Milawa, heart of the high country’s gourmet area. At the bottom of the King Valley this is wine and food country, with artisan and large-scale producers of wine, olives, cheeses, breads, mustards, berries and much else. My first stop is Brown Brothers winery. The familyowned business has been around for 120 years. I’m familiar with some of their wines; the usual suspects grace the shelves on Kiwi supermarkets, but there is a range here at the cellar door that I’ve never heard of. Brown Brothers wine educator Steve Kline runs through some of the regional highlights, including vermintino, tarrango, graciano and a heavy red mondeuse blend that’s like getting punched in the mouth from the inside. We give each wine a sniff and a swirl, Steve says something knowledgeable and I nod. Steve clearly knows his stuff, but this is all pretty laidback. It’s about making wine accessible and getting people to try something new. Next to the cellar door is the Epicurean Centre where wine and food are carefully matched, but my favourite part of the tour is a quick peek inside the kindergarten. A winery-inminiature, it is where winemakers experiment with different grapes, blends and methods in the hope one day some of them will graduate to be a fully fledged part of the Brown Brothers’ repertoire. 3pm: Thankfully, digs for the night are almost directly across the road at the Lindenwarrah Country House. It’s at the luxury end of the market, with spacious rooms, lots of elegant communal areas and beautiful grounds that back on to vineyards. And if you go out to the very end of the car park and stand on the roof of your car you can even get Vodafone coverage. 6pm: There’s a restaurant onsite, but I mosey across the road for dinner at the Milawa pub. It’s a typical country town pub, in a good way, with a dining room attached and a garden to enjoy a still Victorian evening, interrupted occasionally by flocks of galahs, which are considered a pest – hence the term ‘‘flamin’ galah’’. As I walk back to the hotel the sunset casts a orange-red hue over the vineyards. It’s an astonishing sight. I take a picture on my little digital. It’s crap. Sometimes you’ve just got to be there. Thursday, 10am: After a decent breakfast I hit the road and head to the wineries about 30 minutes up the King Valley. Bounded by hills on two sides and with the picturesque King River flowing down the middle it’s a pleasant place to try a wine or two. First up is Pizzini Wines, where I’m met by Fred Pizzini. Fred looks like a Canterbury sheep farmer, perhaps a testament to the hands-on approach the smaller family- owned operations have to take in this area. Like many of the families in the valley, the Pizzinis are from Italian stock. Fred’s father, Roberto, immigrated from Italy in 1956 to work on the Snowy Mountains scheme. But he never got near it and ended up in the King Valley farming tobacco. As the future of that business began to look shaky in the 1970s and 80s, the Pizzinis and others turned to grapes. In many instances they grew on contract to Brown Brothers before one-by-one starting their own wineries and then eventually moving into Italian varieties. Fred shows me around the setup, where old tobacco sheds are put to good use storing wine. As well as tastings at the cellar door, Fred’s wife, Katrina, runs a cooking school