Visit to the Mornington Peninsula

To provide visitors who are travelling on to Melbourne from the Sydney Festival with a look at Victoria's wine country, a small group will travel by bus from Melbourne to the Mornington Peninsula.  The first stop was at Hurley Vineyards for a tutored wine tasting, and then we proceeded for lunch to the acclaimed winery and restaurant 'Ten Minutes by Tractor'.  

Pinot Tasting at Hurley Vineyard

Victoria offers some very special wine country, especially the Mornington Peninsula for its Pinot Noir.  So it was essential that we show our visitors some of this country.

Hurley vineyard, owned and operated by Kevin Bell and Tricia Byrnes, makes some of the country’s best Pinots.

So we were delighted to be invited to take our visitors there for a tutored wine tasting.

About an hour and a half from Melbourne, we climbed aboard our mini bus at 10am to set off for the Peninsula.  The weather was uncharacteristically cold – we had to seriously rug up – Melbourne didn’t win any points for its weather that weekend!  Kevin Bell presented a private tasting tailored just to our group. Kevin is totally committed to making Pinot, is intently focused on terroir and works with each of his three parcels to craft three quite different but beautiful wines (Garamond, Lodestone and Hommage (a Swiss clone)).  Our guests felt honoured to have been part of such an enthusiastic, insightful and informative presentation of the Pinot grape in this part of Victoria.

Luncheon at Ten Minutes by Tractor

After our tasting at Hurley Vineyard, we climbed back into our bus and travelled to Main Ridge, 15 minutes away, to enjoy a quick tasting followed by lunch at Ten Minutes by Tractor.  Ten Minutes by Tractor is another Pinot producer on the Peninsula, named 10MXT as the three vineyards which are owned by this producer can be reached within ten minutes from one another by tractor.  10MXT also operates the classiest restaurant on the Peninsula so we simply had to present their degustation menu to our guests.

The presentation of the dishes on the plate was outstanding.

Our first dish, a beautiful rendition of asparagus and goats cheese, was a serious piece of artwork sprinkled with hazelnuts and decorated with fresh nasturtiums.

We also chose one of 10MXT’s three single vineyard Pinots to accompany the food – the 2008 McCutcheon Pinot. This is a delicious Pinot.

Being a Sunday the restaurant was full to the brim, but our two tables received an impeccable service level and the quality of each dish was difficult to fault – certainly a great restaurant to show off the Peninsula to our guests.  Be sure to ask for the degustation menu if you visit.

We were pretty happy when we climbed back into our bus for the return journey to Melbourne. I think we all felt as though we had enjoyed some great Victorian Pinot and made some pretty special friends.