Given its location and the holiday season, most of the places we visited in the Yarra Valley were surprisingly under-crowded, but things got decidedly difficult around lunchtime. Most of the places we visited were relatively small operations, and there weren't too many offering wines that would slide in under Hughesy's long term $10 average.
Almost everywhere we went were underwhelmed by the highly rated Pinot Noirs, many of which seemed to be strawberry-flavoured lolly water and well away from the heartier reds we tended to favour.
Heading out of the Yarra, however, we struck gold when we visited Tahbilk. For a start, though the place was humming, the cellar door attendant who looked after us guided us through the extensive range with helpful commentary, then signed us up for the wine club.
Under other circumstances we might have tasted and trotted, but the quality evident throughout the range, the news that deliveries were freight free, and the fact that there was no minimum buy obligation was enough to get us signing on the dotted line.
I've written at some length elsewhere about Tahbilk's Everyday Drinking Range, which opened up interesting options when it came to maintaining that long term $10 average.
From Tahbilk we were off to Rutherglen, where a circuit around the Muscat Trail culminated in a visit to Pfeiffer Wines at Wahgunyah, where Robyn Pfeiffer inveigled us into signing up for their wine club operation, which worked around two deliveries of a dozen @ $210 a throw each year. We got around a few other operations after we headed up to Beechworth for the New Year and the experience was enough to suggest I'd be quite happy exploring the output from the region on a long term basis.
By 2007 Madam had managed to extricate herself out of the work force, and we were both free to take advantage of $10 air fares on offer as Tiger took off which got us to northern Tasmania via Melbourne.
We were never going to get around a lot of wineries over a four night stay, but by this time I'd got the research thing going, had checked everywhere in Halliday and come up with a one day loop around the wineries on the eastern side of the river, where we found Pinot Noir more in line with what we ere looking for, and were sufficiently impressed by what we found at Brook Eden to sign up for their wine club.
So by the start of 2008 I could have got by very nicely indeed buying from Tahbilk, Pfeiffers, Brown Brothers, Dal Zotto and Brook Eden, and I actually thought of specializing in northeastern Victorian wineries. There were enough of them to keep you supplied with a range of styles to try and an interesting take on assorted new varieties. Throw in the Pinot and Riesling from Brook Eden and things would've been pretty close to hunky dory.
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