Drink in the view
Tourism is booming on Victoria’s pinot coast, with good reason. We take a look at what’s happening in the Geelong wine region.
Why food and wine lovers need to visit Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula
AT 11.50AM ON SATURDAYS and Sundays, the population of the one-pub town of Portarlington swells by the hundreds as the passenger ferry pulls in from its easy one-hour journey from Melbourne’s Docklands. From here, visitors take advantage of the close proximity of the Bellarine Peninsula’s many wineries, hopping into tour buses or taxis and heading off to lunch.
The sprawling Geelong wine region, devastated by phylloxera in the 1870s and now known for its cool-climate pinot noir and chardonnay, stretches up to Meredith in the north, as far south as Anglesea, through the city of Geelong and around the bayside towns of Portarlington and Queenscliff.
It’s become more accessible in recent years, with international flights coming directly into nearby Avalon airport, and the aforementioned ferry service bringing an influx of visitors, along with upgrades to restaurants and cellar doors.
“You can see the city from here, but Melbourne is a world away when you’re on the deck having a glass of wine,” says Liam Tromp, cellar door manager at beach-facing winery Terindah Estate. “The ferry definitely adds an extra layer to everything we do.”
Like its neighbours Jack Rabbit Vineyard and Bennetts on Bellarine – you can easily walk between the three wineries – Terindah was built with visitors in mind. On a busy weekend there may be 80 or so people drinking wine on the deck, a 200-person wedding going on and another 100 sitting down to lunch in the restaurant. It’s hectic, family friendly and affordable.
On the same tourist trail, but with a few more trophies on the shelf, is Scotchmans Hill. It’s one of Bellarine’s oldest wineries, but a change of ownership in 2014 injected some much-needed cash into the brand. The old homestead has since been renovated into an impressive Napa-style cellar door and cafe.
Chief winemaker Robin Brockett, who oversees the Scotchmans Hill, Cornelius, Jack & Jill and Swan Bay labels produced here, joined the business in 1988, two years after its first vintage. He says he has seen the number of visitors coming through steadily rise in recent times, particuarly since their new cellar door.
Robin, who has been putting “Bellarine” on his wine labels for longer than “Geelong” has been an official GI, says shiraz is the best thing coming out of the region now. When he started in the early ’80s, shiraz was “green and weedy”, but now he gets good ripeness, spice and pepperiness, with elegance and ageability. Robin believes this is due to the maritime climate being warmer than it used to be. The warming climate has also inspired him to look at alternative varieties that do well in coastal areas, notably sangiovese, fiano and albarino. “Sure, they might not come into their own for 20 to 30 years, but we can start looking at what will work down the track,” he says.
At Bannockburn Vineyards in the Moorabool Valley, Sue and Judy Hooper are quietly continuing the legacy left by their late father, Stuart Hooper. There’s no cellar door (although you’re welcome to make an appointment to visit), no tours and certainly no water views. “We like to keep quite a low profile because we believe that the wines themselves are the best marketing tool,” Sue says.
Stuart was one of the first to replant vines in the area, which hadn’t been used for wine production since phylloxera was discovered in the mid-1800s. He laid down seven acres of shiraz in the mid-’70s before planting the pinot noir and chardonnay vines that would earn the label’s well-deserved reputation.
The Hoopers were committed to low-intervention winemaking long before it became a marketing buzzword, although they let the winemaker of the day take the lead on style – Matt Holmes took over from Michael Glover in 2014, pulling back on Michael’s controversial levels of whole-bunch fermentation from 100 per cent to less than 20. This will no doubt please the critics who thought the previous pinots too funky, and upset those who loved them.
Chief winemaker Robin Brockett, who oversees the Scotchmans Hill, Cornelius, Jack & Jill and Swan Bay labels produced here, joined the business in 1988, two years after its first vintage. By his rough estimate, the number of visitors coming through is up by at least 50 per cent.
Scientists-turned-winemakers Ray Nadeson and Maree Collis founded Lethbridge Wines more than 25 years ago. Ray doesn’t want you to think the Geelong wine region begins and ends in the Bellarine, although he’s happy for the competition. “The touristdriven venues, and many of them make good wine, set a price that gets people to come – and that’s fine. You can’t build a region around the small set of people happy to spend $60 to $100 on a bottle,” he says.
Their inland winery, off the Midland Highway, is one of the more remote – you’ll drive down unpaved roads for a long while before you see any vines. “It’s dry and it’s flat, and there are rocks everywhere,” Ray says. “But it has its own charm.”
The couple specialise in pinot noir, chardonnay and shiraz, although there are nearly 20 different varieties on pour at their old-school cellar door, mostly from Geelong fruit, backed up by a smattering from Heathcote and Henty.
A couple of years ago they opened a second cellar door, Lethbridge at Hat Rock, but it’s more for locals. “There’s only room for 16 people in the tasting room,” Ray says. And not enough space to park a bus.
At the Hat Rock vineyard, Ray planted gamay for the same reasons Robin put in fiano at Scotchmans Hill. “Climate change is real, and we’re trying to get ahead of that,” he says.
Being only a 30-minute drive from Melbourne, 20-year-old Werribee Park winery Shadowfax is part of the Geelong region by default – you drive past it on your way in and out of the region, and it’s next to the zoo, but it’s a long way from any other cellar door. The label primarily brings in Macedon Ranges fruit, but winemaker Alistair Timms grows mataro, grenache, shiraz and carignan onsite, and sources pinot noir and pinot grigio from his family’s vineyards on the Bellarine Peninsula. Only these wines can be labelled “Geelong”.
Alistair has a close connection to the region: his mother Anne Timms was the winemaker at the original Kilgour Estate until she sold most of it in 2008 (it has since become Jack Rabbit Vineyard). The family held onto about 25 acres and relaunched as Kilgour Wines in 2017. Alistair also makes these wines at Shadowfax, albeit under contract. “I planted my first vines when I was 10 years old, and a few more every time I was home from school holidays too,” he says.
The largest commercial winery in the region didn’t produce a Geelong wine until about a year ago. From its sprawling industrial facility in the Moorabool Valley, not far from the boutique vineyards of Lethbridge and Bannockburn, Idyll Wine Co pushes out some 20 million bottles of chardonnay, shiraz, cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc a year, all made with fruit from inland growing areas such as Mildura, Sunraysia and the Murray Darling.
But in an operational 180, the company recently turned its attentions to the vineyards that surround its production facility – planted in the late 1960s by Darryl and Nini Sefton, who played a big part in the reinvention of the region, producing a 2018 vintage blanc de blancs with “Geelong” on the label in six places.
Turns out it wasn’t a bad wine, so they’ve put in pinot noir and pinot meunier, and plan to produce modest quantities of traditional method sparkling for wider distribution. One local release isn’t going to catapult Idyll into the same league as the region’s boutique producers, but it’s a sign that there’s money to be made. And wine is a business, after all.
Shadowfax winemaker Alistair Timms grows mataro, grenache, shiraz and carignan onsite, and sources pinot noir and pinot grigio from his family’s vineyards on the Bellarine Peninsula. Only these wines can be labelled “Geelong”.