When the snow falls in winter, the cars come. They leave Melbourne on a Friday afternoon, travel north-east for a couple of hours, turn off the Hume Highway onto the gum-lined Snow Road, and just when they’re looking for a stop – they reach Milawa, a small floor-flat town that would mean nothing if it weren’t so famous. Brown Brothers made it famous. It did it by making the kind of wine that people wanted, and as tastes changed Brown Brothers changed, dry, sweet, light, heavy, fizzy, unctuous – Brown Brothers made the wine to suit. To make all these styles, successfully, they had to find new places to grow or buy grapes, cooler places, warmer places, higher places, different places. In doing that, the area opened up – the King Valley , Myrtleford, the Ovens Valley , and even further, across another strip of mountains to the Kiewa Valley . This is alpine country, the big blue rock-strewn alps evident in every scene.

Brown Brothers were so successful with this strategy that pretty well every adult Australian has at some time now drunk a Brown Brothers wine. They also turned a winery in the middle of nowhere into, it’s been claimed many times, Australia ’s most visited cellar door. Winter snow, summer sun, spring festivals and an autumn splash of elms and oaks and poplars that turns the area so red and brown that it virtually looks tartan. The rapid run of alpine streams, the high country, the trout, the vast outstretch of national park; it draws people in. Brown Brothers and the increasing flurry of wine and food producers take this enormous through-traffic and indulge it. Increasingly, that indulgence has an Italian flavour – and it’s not just a grab at the Tuscan bandwagon.

It’s not because a lot of the wine and food families in the area are actually Italian. And they’ve been in the area for a long time. Jump in the Tardis and time-travel yourself back to Myrtleford, in the heart of the Ovens Valley , in 1960, and find an isolated town living almost entirely off two crops: forestry, and tobacco. Italian immigrants principally worked, and then ran, the tobacco farms. The road that is now called the Great Alpine Road, and which runs from one end of this region to the other, was once colloquially known as the Tobacco Road. Indeed, maybe that’s where the idea originally came to convert some of these wide green-yellow tobacco fields into vineyards: American novelist John Steinbeck not only wrote a novel called Tobacco Road, but also one called the Grapes of Wrath.

Or maybe that’s not where the idea came from. Maybe it was a lot less constructed than that. Maybe a lot of the area’s Italian tobacco and beef farming communities already grew small amounts of grapes, so that they could home-make wine for their own tables, just as they made (and still do) their own salamis and breads and pastas. When the cost of growing tobacco became significantly less economic, and the Australian wine industry was just starting to boom, many Italian farming families in the area started growing vines. Chardonnay, riesling, cabernet, merlot, pinot noir, shiraz , they are all grown in these parts, and successfully. But so too are sangiovese, barbera, dolcetto, marzemino, arneis, saperavi, tempranillo, touriga, nebbiolo, the list goes on. The traditional, easy-going, translatable traditions of peasant Italy have poured strong through the region as a whole, from the King Valley at the beginning of the alpine trail through Milawa – Gapsted – Myrtleford – Bright – the Kiewa Valley . And it’s a lot easier to pull the whole Italian thing off if you are actually Italian yourself.

Witness, exhibit A, the Pizzini family – you cannot talk of the King Valley without mentioning their name. Understandably, there is some jealousy in the area regarding their success, but if you look at why they are so successful, there is a straight reason for it: their wines have pretty much always been on the steady improve, have never cost too much money, and are now starting to be referred to as benchmarks; the Pizzini nebiollo certainly is. On top of that, the wines have always been food-friendly, which gives them a leg-up in the restaurant trade, and the 2003 Pizzini Sangiovese, which sold earlier this year for not much more than $20, will one day be talked of as the wine to really introduce Australian sangiovese to Australians – not because it’s the best sangiovese ever made on these shores (Julian Castagna, just over the way in Beechworth, would arguably lay claim to that title), but because it was the first really good Australian sangiovese made to a price that people could afford, and in numbers that people could find. It certainly is the wine that has made people pull out their maps and look at exactly where the King Valley is.

Two things: this call on the 2003 Pizzini sangiovese, as good as the wine is, may seem a bit harsh on the Crittenden “I” range of Italian varietal wines that enjoyed a glorious run through the late 1990s, and maybe it is too tough a call. The Crittenden wines have a real significance in the King and Alpine Valley story. This 2003 Pizzini wine though far exceeds the “I” range wines of that era, and its clear branding and association with the King Valley and this key Italian-King Valley family gives it a strong edge. This 2003 wine is an important wine, and history will judge it as such.

Another: to hail the King and Alpine valleys as best suited and segmented as producers of Italian varietal wines is neither accurate, nor intelligent. For starters, riesling, particularly in the higher reaches of the King Valley , can be exceptionally floral, fresh and engaging, and arguably undervalued. Not only do the likes of Dal Zotto, Chrismont, and Pizzini all produce at-times wonderful riesling out of the King Valley , but wineries like De Bortoli use it to terrific effect in some of its great-value Windy Peak releases.

There is also a little-known but highly informative fact about the Buffalo River Valley , which leads directly off Myrtleford, essentially in the Ovens Valley area. This fact is that when prestigious Beechworth winery Giaconda got the bug for shiraz in the second half of the 1990s, it bought shiraz grapes from a vineyard in the Buffalo River Valley and turned them into the first Giaconda shiraz (1998). The exact same story is true for Castagna, which bought shiraz grapes off the same Buffalo River vineyard in 1998, and made the first Castagna shiraz with them. Apart from being a cute quirk of fate that both Giaconda and Castagna began their shiraz quest from the same Myrtleford vineyard, it’s a pointer to the potential of the area: both the 1998 Giaconda and Castagna shirazes are very good wines. If great winemakers can make wines of this quality from grapes grown at Myrtleford, then others should be able to as well.

Though it’s possible that shiraz wouldn’t be the grape they’d do it with – because there’s a fair argument that cabernet sauvignon might actually be the grape with the most potential in the area. Indeed, making really good cabernet from this area is probably a lot easier than selling it. Although Gapsted, one of the most prominent wineries in the region, do buy some cabernet grapes from outside the region, the quality of its Ballerina Canopy cabernet sauvignon for the past three years running points to great potential for this grape in the region. Other than perhaps the tiny Ringer Reef winery, merlot has been disappointing in the area, though if you look at the region’s climate figures you’d think it would be ideal for it.

Italian varietals and styles. Sangiovese. Cabernet sauvignon – one of the great surprises of the region’s short history is that no one has actively chased the “super Tuscan” style of sangiovese-cabernet. The vines themselves are certainly in plentiful supply in the area, and both perform very well. This is particularly surprising considering the area’s dominating handicap: as a wine area, it is noticeably bereft of icons. The Barossa Valley and Margaret River and Coonawarra and all the other major regions of Australia have leading, beacon, icon wines that people fight over; the King and Alpine Valleys have no such wines. At the very top end of Australia wine, it means that these regions are not yet taken seriously – a challenge if ever there was one.

Not that these regions have had a lot of time to create such an icon – and another little-known fact is that the Whitlands and Myrtleford and Buckland Valley areas – all part of the King and Alpine Valleys of north-east Victoria – have over the past 15 years slugged their way through phylloxera (a bug that loves eating the roots of vines, until it kills them) infestation and associated issues, which over that time has meant that just about all of their vines in these specific areas have needed to be replanted onto phylloxera-resistant roots. While this is a replanting scheme that can and has been done gradually, it’s meant that to some extent the region has had to plant itself twice. It’s a fact that would slow the momentum of any wine region. It’s a fact that can only be lent on for so long though; there are a lot of struggling grape growers in these parts, and unless the wines of the area become a whole lot more sought-after, terrible times are ahead.

Which isn’t to put a downer on the King and Alpine Valleys; the opposite. This is a magnificent area, quite possibly the most picturesque wine region in Australia, or the equal of any. The wines too are progressively getting better, more diverse, and closer to where they want and need to be. Some wines though aren’t as close as they should be, and this is the needle and the damage done to the region’s wine identity. Wine is a very strange crop in farming terms: big crops aren't always a good thing. As the grape farmers of the region embrace this fact, the tastes are and will and should be fascinating.

Best cellar doors

Gapsted Wines
Great Alpine Road, Gapsted
(03) 5751 1383, www.gapstedwines.com.au
Don’t be fooled by the lines of big steel tanks – this is a delightful cellar door in a delightful setting, with a large range of wines on tasting, priced from the budget to the semi-exclusive. The bulk of the wines offer very good value, the cabernet-based wines at all levels in particular. You also get the chance to taste one of Australia’s only saperavis – and if you’re struggling to keep up, coffee is also available.

Pizzini
King Valley Road, Whitfield (King Valley)
(03) 5729 8278, www.pizzini.com.au
Pizzini is a winery that a lot of people have wanted to like for quite some time – the people are nice, they’re in the wine business for the right reasons, the wines match well to food and as an added bonus, the bottle labels look good. That the wines themselves have taken great strides forward over the past couple of years though mean that there are now better reasons than ever to visit the place; it’s now not just the heart and soul of King Valley wine, it’s got the wines to back it up. It’s an excellent cellar door experience.

Dal Zotto Estate
Edi Road, Cheshunt (King Valley)
(03) 5729 8321, www.dalzottoestatewines.com.au
The first time Dal Zotto wines were recommended to me I didn’t take much notice; the name just didn’t inspire the right images. The day I visited though all preconceptions were erased: from the excellent riesling to the equally good sangiovese, the range of wines is very strong. The rustic cellar door is located far into the scenic depths of the valley, heightening the pleasure – with plans to move onto the main Whitfield road in the near future. Dal Zotto is a King Valley leader, and also produces probably Australia’s only prosecco – a light sparkling wine of delicious appeal.

Symphonia Wines
Boggy Creek Road, Myrrhee (King Valley)
(03) 5729 7519.
The wines have always been interesting, the creation of Peter Pread. Near the end of 2005 Peter Read sold to members of the Miranda family, with the wines now being shown at the Same Miranda winery near the start of the Snow Road, just short of Milawa (on the Melbourne side). Where the style of these wines will head - which have always been highly idiosyncratic - I cannot yet say.

Chrismont
Upper King Valley Road, Cheshunt (King Valley)
(03) 5729 8220, www.chrismont.com.au
It’s run by the other half of the Pizzini family – so whatever you do, don’t rock in and start making rude remarks about the Pizzini winery down the road. Not that that’s what you’re here for: it’s the wines, and they’re good, with a wide selection at various prices; Italian varietals galore, under both the Chrismont and La Zona labels. The view down the valley from here is gorgeous, there’s accommodation available, and if you don’t like Italian-sounding wines, the riesling is excellent.

Politini
Upper King River Road, Cheshunt
(03) 5729 8277, www.politiniwines.com.au
New-ish to selling their own wine but they’ve been growing and selling wine grapes in the region for over 15 years – some of their grapes still make it into Brown Brothers’ elite Patricia cabernet. The cellar door offers stunning views and a wide range of affordable wines, from sauvignon blanc to sangiovese, shiraz and cabernet sauvignon.

Brown Brothers
Snow Road, Milawa.
(03) 5720 5500, www.brown-brothers.com.au
It’s all been said about Brown Brothers – it’s not Australia’s most visited cellar door for nothing. An enormous array of wines, from sweet to semi-sweet to dry to sparkling, and then on to fortified. Every taste is catered for, and while the cellar room itself is large, it still maintains its rustic feel. The epicurean centre, where you can dine (food-wine matching is the house specialty) is also excellent. No wonder people find it so hard to resist stopping off here.

Wood Park
Milawa Cheese Factory, Factory Road, Milawa.
(03) 5727 3367, www.woodpark.com.au
The wines stand up for themselves – excellent pinot gris, chardonnay, and shiraz, all very much in cool climate mode – but as part of the excellent Milawa Cheese Factory (don’t be put off by the word factory, it’s a great complex) Wood Park is an essential stop. Taste the cheese next door, stroll into the cellar door, grab an ice-cream, wander through the art gallery and then through the hand-crafted furniture workshop, then settle back in the restaurant for a (decent) coffee.

Michelini
Great Alpine Road, Myrtleford
(03) 5751 1990, www.micheliniwines.com.au
The building is a bit garish – it’s right in the centre of Myrtleford – but the wines are honest and affordable, with styles to suit most tastes. Sweet red, soft merlot, woody whites and a sparkling Fragolino that tastes remarkably like fresh, slightly under-ripe, liquid strawberries.

Boynton’s
Great Alpine Road, Porepunkah.
(03) 5756 2356
It’s become a lovely estate, the vineyards sweeping from the valley floor and up the hillside, the view from the cellar door both to Mount Buffalo and along the valley to Eurobin as good as any in the region. For various reasons the wines have changed names in recent years from Boynton’s of Bright to simply Boynton’s, and now to Feathertop, but the juice inside is generally cleaner and crisper than it’s been for years. In summer and autumn, a limited café also operates.

Annapurna Wines
Simmonds Creek Road, Mount Beauty
(03) 9739 1184, www.annapurnawines.com.au
It’s one of the prettiest spots imaginable, an immaculate vineyard perched on a hillside, the blue soaring hulk of Victoria’s tallest mountain, Mount Bogong, rearing up in front of you. Visit on a clear spring day and that mountain will be capped in snow, while meanwhile you sit in comfort, snacking on very well prepared meals and drinking (as a suggestion) fine, dry, lemony wines, still and sparkling. I’ve been there a dozen times; I keep going back.

Ceccanti
Bay Creek Lane, Mongans Bridge (north of Mount Beauty, off the Kiewa Highway).
(03) 5754 5236, www.ceccanti.com.au
It’s a delightful setting, down the end of a dusty lane, far away from the maddening crowd. Indeed you could hardly get a more archetypally rural Australian setting, and in the warmer months you can sit outside and enjoy it all, wines, food, the grandness of a fertile country landscape. The winery promotes itself as Italian-inspired, which seems strange given that there isn’t an Italian grape varietal, or even wine style, in sight (it’s all cabernet, shiraz and merlot), but if you can put that aside, the setting is perfect, and the food can be satisfying. If you are thinking of dining here, it pays to book.

Wines to try

While the King and Alpine regions are fast becoming known for their Italian varietal wines, you name it and it’s likely to be grown here – because it’s a mountainous region, and a warm one on the valley floors, styles range from high-altitude sparkling to delicate whites to pinot noir to hefty reds. Riesling, especially in the King Valley, can be excellent – indeed its underrated.

2004 Pizzini King Valley Riesling, A$19
A gorgeously floral wine. It’s dartingly citric but in user-friendly mode, with a finish that is long and sure. If that sounds fairly basic then buy a bottle and snap it open: it’s about as enjoyable as young riesling can possibly be.

2000 Pizzini King Valley Nebbiolo A$45
The 1998 of this stamped Pizzini as a bona fide star of north-east Victoria, and the 2000 is a substantial follow-up. It’s developed, it’s leathery, it’s got a thorough rush of mouth-watering tannin, and if you can get your mind off food, you’ll also notice nuances of dried herbs and earth and cherry. Ripper, Pizzini.

2005 Wood Park King Valley Pinot Gris A$19
Wood Park grows its grapes on a variety of cool sites, but this is from Whitlands, one of the high vineyard points of the King Valley. It sells faster than they can make it. It’s dry and pear-like, flashing with freshness and acidity, travels nicely through the finish and smacks your lips dry at the end of each slirp. No wonder there’s a clamber for it.

1999 Brown Brothers Patricia Sparkling Pinot Noir Chardonnay Pinot Meunier A$40
It’s grown at altitude and left on lees for five years, and while there’s no real market buzz about alpine sparkling wine (Tasmania is the market darling right not) this is as good as any Australian fizz. It’s a blaze of apple and apple skin and lemon, all of which tastes fresher than a kiss, and then, as it slips across your tongue, it’s creamy and rich and substantial. It is not over-priced.

2002 Brown Brothers Patricia Cabernet Sauvignon A$40
I wouldn’t call it luxurious, nor saturated or concentrated or inky. It is though stylish, long-flavoured, and highly cellarable, with spicy-cedary mulberried flavours carried on a clean stream of blackcurrant. It creeps up on you: the longer you look at it, the better it seems. It’s a sleeper; it is good.

2001 Gapsted Ballerina Canopy Cabernet Sauvignon A$26
The alpine region is surprisingly well suited to cabernet sauvignon – an indication of the wide range of sites and climates in the region. There’s a bit too much sweet vanillin oak sliding around this wine, but it’s smooth and seductive and married to a rich vein of perfumed plum/blackcurrant, with powdery tannins as a frame. The 1999 and 2000 are also excellent.

2002 Chrismont La Zona Marzemino A$22
It’s a fascinating study in how different a wine can taste, even when the basic flavours are the same. Raspberries, strawberries, plums, perhaps some dried herbs and bitter chocolate – but the tannin and acid and flavour all combine to give it an exotic feel, like a holiday for the mouth.

2002 Ringer Reef Merlot A$26
Ringer Reef is one of the more gorgeous vineyards you’ll ever see – it rears up a steep slope on the outskirts of the Porepunkah township, the (100%) merlot vines tendered like members of the family. A cellar door has just recently opened, but a couple of vintages have already been released: this is classy merlot, full of creamed raspberries and blackberries and earth, and finished with a fleck of olive.

2003 Dal Zotto Sangiovese A$22
It’s a wild wine, dirty and herbal, like walking out and smelling a barbecue in a bush landscape. It’s also alive with chewy, stringy tannin, with plum and morello cherry flavours doing their best to keep it bright. Perhaps it can best be described like this: it’s a sangiovese. It breaks rules, but seems endlessly interesting at the same time.

Where to eat

Breakfast:
This is the region’s downfall, especially if you’re staying in Bright. If you’re lucky, your accommodation is on the breakfast ball. Otherwise, the best places are: the Smoko Big Shed Café, 1438 Great Alpine Road, Smoko, (03) 5755 2344, though be warned, it doesn’t open till 10am, and it is a ten minute drive out of Bright. The view to the (often) snow-capped mountains nearby though is phenomenal; the folk are remarkably friendly in the best-possible-way, and the food is honest, tasty, and sensitively prepared. The coffee too is good. Of a similar high standard is the King River Café (03) 5727 3461 at the opposite end of the region – it’s on the Snow Road at Oxley, near Milawa, serves breakfast between 9-11am and is also terrific for lunch and/or dinner. This is probably the region’s best place for coffee full stop.

In Bright itself, your best bet is Jackie’s Tea Room, 4 Ireland Street, Bright, (03) 5750 1303. It’s old-fashioned and unimaginative, and the coffee’s dubious, but the meal’s are solid and reliable and it’s probably, most importantly, the most comfortable place in town to sit and relax in. You’re in the country; it feels country; it feels pretty right.

Winery restaurant:

Restaurants at wineries are raging all over the country, but they’re strangely sparse in this neck of the woods; arguably a winery-restaurant nearby to Bright, done well, would make a killing. Far and away the best option is the Brown Brothers Epicurean Centre, Bobinawarrah Road, Milawa, (03) 5720 5540, which not only serves fine food but has a long-held focus on food-wine matching, so you can learn something over lunch. Brown Brothers have a wine to suit every palate, sweet to sparkling to serious.

At the other end of the area, the Annapurna Winery near Mount Beauty puts a lot of care into its food, which is a bonus because the setting is so drop-dead gorgeous that you want to spend time there anyway.

Lunch:

King Valley/Milawa: They’ve got every base covered at the Milawa Cheese Factory, including an excellent lunch restaurant. This gets busy and the service doesn’t always stand up to the bustle, so book ahead and take your patience pills beforehand. The wine list here is good though, the bulk of it local wines, and the food can be excellent. The nearby King River Café at Oxley is also a great lunch spot.

If you’re down in the deep sweet woods of the King Valley your eating options are limited, especially in the context that the famed food of the Mountain View Hotel, Corner Mansfield and Chestnut roads, Whitfield, 03 5729 8270 is still good and hearty, but not in the class that it once was. This is all about to change though: Barb Sartori will soon open King Valley Cucina on the King Valley Road, (03) 5729 3604, and it’s likely to become the default if you’re hunting down a wood-fired pizza. This will also serve as a cellar door for Yalumba’s Redbank range of King Valley wines.

More adventurous is Rinaldos, which hopes to open in late 2005 in Whitfield. To be run by Adam and Christina Pizzini, it’ll be attached to a new (but run separately) cellar door for Dal Zotto wines, and if the restaurant history of this pair is anything to go by the food will be worth travelling for.

Or of course, you could just drop in for a cup of very good coffee and very good cake at The Threeway Café, 4905 Whitfield Road, Whitfield, (03 5729 8388.

Alpine Valleys: The Alpine Enoteca, Great Alpine Road Myrtleford, (03) 5752 1155 serves excellent coffee and reasonable breakfast and lunch. If you're dining in, or staying near, Myrtleford though, there is a fantastic restaurant called Range on the main highway - chef Michael Ryan is something of a local legend. I've only eaten at Range twice, but on the second occasion all three dishes were blindingly good - if that is representative of the general standard, then this place is worth travelling for. It is a must. The wine list, though not lengthy, is also extremely well crafted. Don't be put off by the fact that this restaurant is attached to a motel: the food is as good as any in the region.

A couple of wrungs below that - though it is still a worthy option - is  the Ovens Hotel (sometimes referred to as the Happy Valley Hotel), 4994 Great Alpine Raod Ovens, (03) 5751 1628. Lots of good beers, hearty food, excellent service - a good pub. (And again, Saturday night you'll probably need to book ahead).

In Bright itself, you could try the Liquid Am-bar, 8 Anderson Street, Bright, (03)5755 2318. It’s been operating a long time, and the food can be surprisingly good.

This  is no comparison, or competition, however to the recently rejuvenated Poplars restaurant in Star Road (www.poplars.com.au). Run by Patrick Heanue and Julia Wilson along French principles, it's stylish but relaxed, with precise (cooking) technique oozing from its pores - and if you want to, you can BYO. It isn't the flashiest restaurant in the area, but it's become my personal favourite. This is a very strong menu, across the board, and the word 'French' is not lip service. A Coq au Vin had here recently was sublime.

Special dinner: Simone’s Restaurant, 98 Gavan Street, Bright, (03) 5755 2255. It’s been an institution among foodies for a very long time, but things have really powered ahead since it moved two years ago into historic premises in the centre of Bright; it was like it had finally come home. Italian provincial cuisine meets the best of the region’s local ingredients. The wine list is very good, but not quite up to the standard of the food. Regardless, Simone’s can be a special dining experience. Book well ahead - really. Simone's has had a high reputation for a very long time, but if anything, the standard has recently increased. Simone's will also accommodate BYO.

It’s smaller, more intimate, and can be even harder to get in to – it’s principally for rooming guests – but the restaurant at Villa Gusto, 630 Buckland Valley Road, (03) 5756 2000, www.villagusto.com.au serves arguably the most stunning food in the region - under the guidance of Douglas Elder. This is a set menu degustation of the highest callibre. No BYO here. The wine list is formed around a "sangiovese library".

** Beechworth is technically not in the Alpine Valleys region, but it's only 25 minutes away from most places within it - and it's a nice drive. Beechworth has some excellent eating options, most notable the Warden's Wine Bar, and if that's full, then the Green Shed can also be very good. Just over the hill from there, at Stanley, is the Stanley Hotel (excellent pub food) and The Galloping Goat Restaurant, chefed by the renowned Michel Renoux.**

Cross the mountain to the Mount Beauty area, and hunt out the Rois Diner, 177 Kiewa Valley Highway, Tawonga, (03) 5754 4495. It’s modern Italian cuisine, and it can be very, very good.

Bakeries: There are two of real note. The first is historic, homely, well run and well stocked, and copes with kids very well. It’s called Heiners Bakery, 87 Standish Street Myrtleford, (03) 5752 1430. The other is the Mount Beauty Bakery, 17 Hollonds Street, (03) 5754 4870. It’s a classically-designed café-bakery that never disappoints.

Where to stay

If you can’t find somewhere good to stay in this area, then you’re not really trying – this region is a tourism mecca. Two website’s will help you out: www.northeastvalleys.info and www.alpinelink.com.au, though the www2.visitvictoria.com site will also serve you well. There really are too many places to mention, but all standards and styles are catered for.

At the top end, places of real note include:

Villa Gusto near Bright, mentioned about, is spectacularly luxurious. Modelled on the very best Italian villas, the attention to detail here is phenomenal: it is not inexpensive, but I’ve never heard a bad word said on its quality and delivery.

For something completely different, the historic Mount Buffalo Chalet, (03) 5755 1500, www.mtbuffalochalet.com.au, perched at the top of this gorgeous mountain, is quite an experience: built in 1910 (and how they did it, I’ll never know) as a place to get away from it all (in style) this takes some beating – you’ll certainly get a quiet night’s sleep, and wake up to either a phenomenal view, or snow all around, depending on the time of year.

In Milawa, essentially across the road from the Brown Brothers cellar door, is the excellent Lindenwarrah Resort, Bobinawarrah Road Milawa, (03) 5720 5777, www.lindenwarrah.com.au . This is exceptionally well appointed.

Photo: Ringer Reef winery and vineyard, now with an operating cellar door (weekends only).