The Mornington Peninsula

When, on a New Year’s morning, you peer through narrowed and sensitive eyes at the litter of empty bottles and cans, and immobile, prostrate bodies strewn at random along the sandy beaches of Portsea and Sorrento, on the tip of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, it is difficult in the extreme to imagine that the same Mornington Peninsula is well on the way to recognition as one of Australia’s up and coming winemaking Gardens of Eden.

The Peninsula is on the move. Classy vineyards and restaurants are today springing out of the places where generations of Melburnians have traditionally trekked to get wrecked. Quaint pubs and bars, interesting delicatessens and fresh food shops, new resort-golf course complexes, fashionable property developments and new roads that almost make it possible to get there and back from Melbourne without completely losing your cool are appearing from nowhere, in a wave of development that shows no sign of slowing down.

Wine is an integral part of the Peninsula’s change of image. It has given something special to the old established area of sprawling estates and weekend retreats for the rich and even richer. Portsea is the only beach in Australia where the lifeguards have Toorak accents, but that’s not enough. Now that the local summer population in swelled by myriads of Melburnians from all walks of life, the peninsula needed a new edge, and wine is it.

The Mornington Peninsula is perhaps the only one of the major Victorian wine regions major in terms of vineyard numbers, not their area or output not to have a winemaking history last century. About eight hectares of vines were planted before 1900 near Hastings, but little remains of them or their fate. In the late ‘forties and ‘fifties Douglas Seabrook made several vintages from a vineyard planted at the base of Arthur’s Seat, but interest waned, perhaps with the inherent viticultural difficulties of a cool, windy wine region, and the vineyard was phased out.

The real wine developments began in the early 1970’s when Baillieu Myer was persuaded by David Wynn to convert part of his family’s Santa Gertrudis and quarter horse stud to a hobby vineyard, with the original intent of meeting the vinous requirements of the family and friends. In 1972 a plot of four hundred vines were planted on a trial basis. Now with five hectares under vine it is one of the principal, and indeed larger, vineyards of the Mornington Peninsula. Its production too has increased beyond the Myers’ own limits of consumption and as a consequence Elgee Park wines are now available in restaurants and from the mailing list, where parcels of their small quantities of Rhine Riesling, Chardonnay and Cabernet Merlot are keenly contested.

My favourite is the Chardonnay, a fine but richly-textured wine reflecting complex fruit and barrel fermentation and maturation. It fills the mouth with flavour, and with a structure of soft oak tannins and clean acidity finishes long and dry.

Baillieu Myer’s first wines were made in fairly primitive conditions in an old shed on his property by Ian Hickinbotham, whose family has been completely involved in the inception of the region since the earliest days. The first rieslings showed only small promise and the vines were grafted to cabernet sauvignon. However once the crop from residual riesling vines were made with the more professional facilities of the Hickinbotham’s former Anakie winery, it became clear that the Peninsula could add rhine riesling to its list of compatible varieties.

If Elgee Park developed the first vineyard, the credit for the first winery built on the Peninsula goes to Nat and Rosalie White, who wasted no time by beginning to plant Main Ridge Estate the same year they bought it -1975. Today 2.4 hectares of cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and pinot noir are making solid progress ‘neath the cold winter skies and sunny but never excessively hot summer spells of the Peninsula climate.

Although work commenced on the winery in 1980, just in time for the property’s first vintage that year, it has only recently been fully completed, which Nat admits with a careless shrug. It’s hard to imagine him being worried by too much. The first Main Ridge Estate wines were sold in 1981.

Nat White left a career in the Public Works Department, where he was Assistant Director of the Ports and Harbours Division, to move full-time into his role as a vintner. That was in 1983, six years ago. The seed for this move was sown back in 1965, when a holiday in Europe with Rosalie introduced him to the great wine regions and their generally desirable products. He hasn’t done a bad job since in emulating their standards.

The Main Ridge wines are a Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and a Pinot Noir. The Cabernet is particularly elegant and complex, with herbaceous and berry-like fruit always cleverly balanced with oak and tannin. Main Ridge Pinot Noir is amongst the best of this variety in Australia, and from what I have seen of the forthcoming vintage, Nat White is getting closer to the mark of a truly great wine.

Garry Crittenden, who is no relation to the retailers of the same name, is another of the Mornington Peninsula vignerons, although his activity began more recently than Elgee Park and Main Ridge. Like a bull at a gate, he has easily made up on lost time and his prominent label, Dromana Estate, has perhaps become the best-known of the local wineries, not without reason.

In a way Crittenden’s participation in the wine industry is a reflection of the progress it has made. Although it was Australian wine that first captured his interest a few years ago, it was with French wine that he became truly captivated. Not knowing what to try next, he found himself drinking a Tasmanian wine in a restaurant and becoming unusually impressed. “That began an ongoing love affair with Tasmanian wine, so after thoroughly investigating them I found that they didn’t offer a lot of ‘Frenchness’, but a freshness and intensity quite unique in Australia”, he explains.

Later on, after a similar discovery with Mornington Peninsula wine, quite likely either a Main Ridge Estate or an Elgee Park, he studied the Peninsula and began planting on his present site three kilometres from Dromana. Like many others of the region he has opted for Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and a Cabernet Merlot blend. Occasionally small parcels of Merlot are kept separate, and from those I have tried they are worth hunting out.

Dromana Estate Pinot Noir, like most others of the region is only made in minute quantities, and like the other Peninsula pinots is elegant, supple and spicy, with complex strawberry/cherry characteristics. Indeed the future for a whole range of varieties looks secure down Mornington way.

Graeme and Jan Pinney planted Rhine Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc at their Karina Vineyard, not far from Dromana Estate. I think the quality of both wines has been of some surprise to several of the region’s vignerons, who were perhaps a shade sceptical when the Pinneys put them into Mornington ground. The vintages currently available are from the first commercial harvest, and like other Peninsula wines are delicate, elegant and rewardingly complex in flavour.

The Hickinbotham family have also released a Peninsula Rhine Riesling, grown at St Neot’s Estate. The more exciting of the two St Neot’s-Hickinbotham wines available, in the most extremely limited way possible, is the Pinot Noir, which indicates yet again that the Mornington Peninsula could become Australia’s Burgundy. Winemaker Peter Cumming shows a bit of flair with this grape, as he also demonstrates with the remarkable Hickinbotham Geelong Pinot Noir.

The Hickinbothams have had much to do with Brian Stonier’s Merricks Vineyard, from which I have a soft spot for the Burgundian varieties of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Ripe, elegant and superbly balanced, they have made their way onto a number of excellent wine lists. The Cabernet Sauvignon is intense and aromatic, with ripe fruit and a long palate with good weight and finish.

Other exciting wines to watch are the Balnarring Chardonnay – rich, ripe and quincey, and the Merricks Estate Shiraz, which approaches the definitive black peppery and spicy style Victoria is famous for.

With more vineyard development in the region and with Mildara’s recent entry into the Peninsula as the first big wine company, the future looks optimistic. However there won’t exactly be a glut of Mornington wines onto the open market, for the stratospheric land prices there and the boutique nature of its operations will always keep quantities quite small and prices in the upper levels. My message is simple. They are worth it. Please login to post comment