The Mornington Peninsula

We recently visited the beautiful Mornington Peninsula. We wanted to visit the wineries and see what we, as tourists, like about the cellar door experience. It’s not long before our own cellar door will be open and so I wanted to make sure we had all the fine details correct. Little things are important; like how and where to place spittoons, wine storage and how the food and wine experience is integrated.



Thanks to many recommendations from twitter we visited some fantastic places.

We followed a recommendation to stay at the Hotel Sorrento and this was terrific advice. Sorrento is about a twenty-minute drive to the wineries and this beautiful little seaside town was a relaxing way to enjoy a few days on the Peninsula. I suspect that come summer, the place would be abuzz with people and the quiet that we enjoyed would be replaced by a bustling tourist influx.



The Hotel Sorrento is a magnificent historic building and has been beautifully and sympathetically restored and renovated. If I owned pub (other than our old hotel in Gundaroo) I would love it to be just like this. The rooms were generous, clean and comfortable and we enjoyed the food in the busy hotel restaurant.



Sorrento has a lot to offer visitors. Munching on fish and chips (washed down with a good riesling) overlooking the turquoise waters of the bay was a good start to our stay. On the last day I spotted a sign in town for “Fine Food - home of Sorrento’s famous vanilla slice”. How could one resist? It was so unbelievably good that I am still thinking about that damn vanilla slice.



There are some wonderful winery cellar doors on the Mornington Peninsula. Most charge a small fee for tasting (refundable on purchase of wine). The vineyard manager and I may have been a little over enthusiastic when it came to buying wine. I am still a little nervous about how many cases are going to turn up here in the next week or so.

The region’s heroes are pinot noir and chardonnay. These are the wines that we stocked up on. Getting around in our rent-a-car was fairly easy and we only had about ten fights over my navigation skills. At each winery there was a flock of luxury 4wds. They also do pinot gris quite well on the Peninsula – which no doubt satisfies the appetites of these upwardly mobile visitors.


Port Phillip Estate

The food and wine experience on the Peninsula is extensive and caters to all.

The Sunny Ridge strawberry farm was offering the first pickings of the season. We purchased several punnets of strawberries and the future wine makers devoured these on our travels whilst we concentrated on the strawberry characters of the local pinot.

We enjoyed lunch at the newly hatted Ten Minutes by Tractor. This would have been far more enjoyable and comfortable without our little off siders. Next visit we would love to try their degustation.


Ten Minutes by Tractor

The future wine makers loved Stonier. The outdoor playground received a very big tick of approval and satisfied our desire to taste wine in peace.


Gum blossoms at Stonier

I loved the mixture of rustic charm and contemporary architecture throughout the region's wineries.


Montalto


Port Phillip Estate

We purchased a lot of wine; beautiful chardonnay and pinot from Stonier and Willow Creek, pinot from Paringa, Montalto and Foxey's Hangout. I am sure there were possibly a few more. This week's deliveries will reveal all.

This article has 4 comments.

Subscribe:

• Subscribe to the RSS Feed »
• Follow us on Twitter »
• Join us on Facebook »