Established on Charlie and Samantha Baillieu’s beautiful 64ha property “Bulldog Run” in July 1999, the 10 hectare, North-facing vineyard is ideally situated at the heart of the Mornington Peninsula in Merricks North with boundaries on Tubbarubba and Myers Roads.
Circe is a partnership inspired by growing up on the Mornington Peninsula and a love of Pinot Noir.
Dan Buckle and Aaron Drummond met at Mount Langi Ghiran in 2007. After a vintage of Shiraz it was inevitable that the conversation would turn to any other varietal except Shiraz. With both of us growing up on the Mornington Peninsula, we were keen and curious as to what we could do with Pinot Noir from such great soil.
The name Circe derives from Homer and is a nice metaphor for the seductions – and perils – of Pinot Noir.
Garry and Rollo Crittenden are dedicated small scale vignerons with an exciting range of handcrafted wines. Today, their efforts are channelled into producing small batches of wines that elegantly and emphatically speak of their varietal and geographic provenance under the Crittenden Estate, Pinocchio and Geppetto ranges.
Tod Dexter grew up with wine. Along with his parents' considerable interest
in wine he had a childhood friendship with the Crittendon family, one of Melbourne's premium wine merchants who further introduced him to the
world of wine. It was then no surprise that in 1974 after a skiing trip in the US,
Tod ended up in the Napa Valley where he spent a seven-year apprenticeship with one of California's premium family wineries, Cakebread Cellars.
Tod moved home to Australia in January 1987, and after an extensive
search he and his wife Debbie bought a vineyard site at Merricks North on
the Mornington Peninsula. Later that year they planted their first 1.6 hectares
of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Tod then joined forces with Brian Stonier at Stonier Wines where, over the next ten years, he grew the company to become one of Australia's premium producers of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. During this decade the wines Tod created received many accolades both
at home and internationally.
During a formative trip to France in 2000 when they visited the most famous Pinot producers in the world, Tod gained a new respect for the concept of terroir and the responsibility to future generations in caring for the land. He also had reinforced to him the importance of attention to detail in both the vineyard and winery. This trip was what encouraged Tod and Debbie to take the next step and produce their own wine. Thus Dexter Wines was born.
D’Anna Middleton Lewis (DML VIN) is a partnership between the D’Anna family, Sam Middleton and Jordan Lewis. It focuses on single site regional Pinot Noir with the first vintage being released in June 2019.
Elgee Park is the oldest vineyard on the Mornington Peninsula. Originally the country retreat of Baillieu (Bails) & Sarah Myer & family, the first vines were planted on the property in 1972.
In consultation with leading minds of the time the choice of a north facing natural amphitheatre site has formed the basis of our great Elgee Park wines. The warm aspect of this site, in a cool climate region is ideal for producing premium grapes. Elgee Park was instrumental in pioneering the early cultivation of Viognier in Australia; with original trail plantings in 1979, these mature vines now produce a delightful aromatic wine. Award winning wines, made under contract by celebrated winemaker Geraldine McFaul, thrive through the passion of the vigneron, the winemaker & the viticulturist.
Elgee Park is committed to sustainable viticulture and have just complete their second year of 100% organic practices. Our wines are vegan friendly with minimal sulphur and no additives used in the wine making process.
Our cellar door is located at the Merricks General Wine Store where all our wines are available for tasting and sales.
First, there was Even Keel. Before Winemaker Sam Coverdale found “a patch of dirt” to care for as his own, it was with Even Keel Wines that he first forged his path establishing his own wine label in 2006.
As a young winemaker setting out Sam’s dad bestowed on him some fatherly advice: “For once in your life, Sam, keep on an even keel!” The nod to keeping a vessel’s keel in a level position, assuring balance and smooth sailing provided ballast to the label that remains as relevant today as ever.
With Sam still at the helm, the label has remained a constant, even as Sam set down roots on the Mornington Peninsula and established Polperro Wines. The winery in Red Hill provides a
home for both labels but while Polperro digs deep into single vineyard expressions, Even Keel
is a label-at-large: Sam Coverdale’s edit of Australian wine regions of note.
Each region is selected for having conditions best suited to specific varieties—be it Pinot Noir
from the Mornington Peninsula, Chardonnay from Tumbarumba or Shiraz from Heathcote—but
with enough elasticity to follow his curiosity in exploring alternative varietals such as Cortese,
Fiano and Tempranillo.
Working with trusted grower partners across the regions, often former colleagues or relationships cultivated earlier in his winemaking career, Sam is entrusted with input throughout the growing season. At harvest, the fruit is carefully hand-picked and then vinified and matured
at the winery on the Mornington Peninsula. The same care and dedication is shown to these
selected parcels of fruit as to the wines of the Polperro label.
The resulting wines are Sam’s interpretation of each region, always in pursuit of consistency, refinement and balance. And never without a spirit of adventure and curiosity.
After two decades of owning and running popular and award-winning Melbourne hospitaity businesses, brothers Michael and Tony Lee turned their years of love and knowledge of fine wines into a livelihood on Victoria's beautiful Mornington Peninsula.
The brothers planted their first vineyard in 1997, at Merricks North near the iconic Peninsula road junction named Foxeys Hangout, from which our label takes its name.
The pair later assumed the management of the former Massoni vineyard at Red Hill then owned by their mentor, the Australian sparkling wine pioneer Ian Home. The brothers have undertaken further plantings of pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot gris in Red Hill on a historic farming property, the home of Foxeys' winery and cellar door.
Garagiste premium Mornington Peninsula wines truly express a sense of the place where they were grown. Focusing on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir we intend to highlight the subtleties of the Peninsula's different sub-regions with small batches of very limited wines.
Hurley Vineyard wraps north to east around the crest of a little volcanic hill in three climats: Lodestone, Hommage and Garamond. Sunlit and airy, it is protected by the surrounding topography.
We owe our terroir to fire and water – the fire of the Eocene volcanoes and the waters of the Southern Ocean, the Tasman Sea and the Port Phillip and Western Port Bays. The volcanoes provided our soil – which is very dark reddish-brown in colour and very fine sandy clay-loam in texture. Full of ironstone, it is free-draining and moisture-retentive. The ocean, sea and two bays - which the Mornington Peninsula runs between - moderate our climate and keep it even and cool.
Hurley Vineyard is at 90 m altitude in the south-eastern lowland hills of the Peninsula in the sub-region formed by Balnarring and Merricks. It has a rainfall of about 750 mm annually. With 350 mm usually falling in the growing season, the low-yielding vines are not irrigated. This is beautiful terroir for growing Pinot Noir.
Kooyong Wines and Port Phillip Estate are a specialist Pinot Noir and Chardonnay producer located on the Mornington Peninsula, one of Australia’s foremost cool climate maritime wine growing regions. Our wines are domain grown, vinified and bottled. The winemaking is overseen by winemaker Glen Hayley.
We endeavour to grow the highest quality fruit that expresses the terroir of each vineyard. Our viticultural philosophy is to develop and maintain a soil and vineyard biota that produces a balanced vine living sustainably in its environment. Our biological farming system is driven by the belief that the health of our vineyard soils and thus vines, underpin wine quality. Our vineyards are always hand-pruned, shoot thinned, shoot positioned and crop thinned. All our fruit is handpicked.
The winemaking philosophy is to best preserve the inherent characteristics present in the fruit, making site-expressive wines of detail and structure. We believe all our wines should convey a sense of the place and the season in which they were grown. Our practises in the winery are low-intervention. Fermentation of all our wines occurs spontaneously with native ambient yeasts. This is also the case for malolactic fermentation. We use wholly French oak for all barrel matured wines, red and white. All our red wines are unfined and unfiltered. Our white wines are all unfined and at times also unfiltered. We bottle all our wines in-house using our dedicated bottling line.
Situated on lush gentle slopes in sight of Western Port Bay, Merricks Estate was one of the first commercial vineyards, planted in 1978 by the Kefford family as a trial to explore the possibilities of wine making in an area that was then known only for its farming and horticulture and tourism.
Merricks Estate since 1982 has produced high quality wines from its estate grown Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon.
Chris and Gail Aylward started producing wine on the Peninsula in 1997. This began with the planting of the Kooyong site and development of a ‘state of the art’ winery at Kooyong. The focus was top quality wine that suited the climate of the Mornington Peninsula. Quality was maintained by controlling all aspects of production including vineyard management, winemaking and bottling.
Kooyong was sold in 2004 to the Gjerja Family also owners of Port Philip Estate.
After the sale of Kooyong the Aylward family ventured back into the wine scene with a new set-up on the Mornington Peninsula ‘Ocean Eight’. The Ocean Eight Winery was built into the hillside at the family’s property in Shoreham. This enabled a temperature controlled, gravity fed winery that would help enhance the quality of all wine made on site.
While waiting for the first pinot gris, chardonnay and pinot noir crops to be picked Mike Aylward, son of Chris and Gail, travelled extensively through Burgundy, Alsace and Champagne to determine styles and quality winemaking techniques. Mike Aylward visited many of the great Burgundy and Alsatian domains on these travels.
Luke O'Connor joined Ocean Eight in the first year as viticulturist. With such a strong emphasis on vineyard management and quality fruit production, Luke was the perfect man for the job.
All Ocean Eight’s wines are made in small quantities/batches to ensure high quality and a focused style of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Gris can be achieved.
Lindsay McCall began his incredible wine journey in 1984 with the purchase of a derelict orchard in Paringa Road. Having grown up on a dairy farm in Fish Creek, Lindsay always wanted to have his own farm and get his hands dirty. Lindsays passion and fascination in wine began in the mid 1970s and by the mid 1980s he decided to follow his dream by establishing Paringa Estate.
In the first ten years progress was slow while Lindsay remained a fulltime school teacher. The first vines were planted in 1985 and by 1990 the home vineyard 10 acres (2.5 ha.) was fully planted. Lindsay became full-time in his business in 1996 allowing him to devote all his time and energy to growing his fruit and making great wine.
Paringa Estates first vintage was in 1988 with a mere 3 tonnes of fruit. By vintage 2000 production had grown to 78 tonnes of fruit, and by 2017 production had grown to 220 tonnes (16,000 cases). Paringa Estate has a strong presence in the Australian market and exports to the UK, Denmark, Poland, Ukraine, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, China and Taiwan.
The incredible list of awards that Paringa Estate has collected with their wines particularly over the past 10 years are testament to the quality of the wines and the passion of the people who have made them.
Terrific vineyards, surf beaches and a close proximity to Melbourne mean the Mornington Peninsula is the perfect home for Polperro, Even Keel, Sam Coverdale’s family.
Having grown up surfing the beaches of northern New South Wales and South East Queensland, Sam started out as a vintage cellar hand at Tyrrell’s at just 18 years of age, before completing degrees in Business from the University of Queensland and Wine Science at Charles Sturt University. Sam joined Hardy’s, working across several Australian wine regions, then in Spain, Italy and France learning from the likes of Jean-Marc Lafage. Through this technical grounding and experience, Sam developed a strong sense of the wine he loves to drink and make – wine that plays to the strengths of particular regions and is true to the climatic conditions of each vintage. He established Even Keel in 2006 with a view to creating drinkable, balanced and elegant wines that continue to interest beyond the first glass. Thereafter Sam founded Polperro in 2009, to showcase single vineyard sites on the Mornington Peninsula.
Port Phillip Estate is a specialist Pinot Noir and Chardonnay producer located on the Mornington Peninsula, one of Australia’s foremost cool climate maritime wine growing regions. Our wines are domain grown, vinified and bottled. The winemaking is overseen by winemaker Glen Hayley.
We endeavour to grow the highest quality fruit that expresses the terroir of each vineyard. Our viticultural philosophy is to develop and maintain a soil and vineyard biota that produces a balanced vine living sustainably in its environment. Our biological farming system is driven by the belief that the health of our vineyard soils and thus vines, underpin wine quality. Our vineyards are always hand-pruned, shoot thinned, shoot positioned and crop thinned. All our fruit is handpicked.
The winemaking philosophy is to best preserve the inherent characteristics present in the fruit, making site-expressive wines of detail and structure. We believe all our wines should convey a sense of the place and the season in which they were grown. Our practises in the winery are low-intervention. Fermentation of all our wines occurs spontaneously with native ambient yeasts. This is also the case for malolactic fermentation. We use wholly French oak for all barrel matured wines, red and white. All our red wines are unfined and unfiltered. Our white wines are all unfined and at times also unfiltered. We bottle all our wines in-house using our dedicated bottling line.
The Portsea Estate vineyard is located on the century old Tintagel property overlooking Bass Strait at the very tip of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, in south east Australia. Its unique ‘terroir’ derives from extensive limestone deposits and a top soil of calcareous sand and humus collected over thousands of years.
The free draining, limestone rich soils provide ideal conditions for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay to thrive and have produced complex, layered wines of distinct character and minerality.
At Prancing Horse Estate we aim to achieve balanced wines with intense flavours and structure. Our imprint on the Australian and French wine landscapes has been achieved through an uncompromising approach using organic and biodynamic principles in our vineyards and in the winery. Throughout the winemaking process, Prancing Horse winemaker, Sergio Carlei oversees the gentlest biodynamic approach.
In the Vineyard, Paul Danaher and his team engage in a rigorous program of biodynamic viticulture. The aim is to improve wine quality and optimise fruit flavours the natural way by continually improving the quality of the soil. These elements have fused and frame our ambition to be regarded as one of Australia's truly great cool-climate producers.
Rare Hare Wines includes our own estate wines, Rare Hare single vineyard range and Rare Hare essential range, and are made on site in our boutique winery. The first Rare Hare releases were from the 2014 vintage to coincide with the opening of our restaurant and the Jackalope Hotel at the vineyard. Our cellar door is open every day from 11am-5pm.
Planted in 1989, the 11-hectare LL Vineyard has taken root in the deep volcanic soils typical of the slopes of the Mornington Peninsula, and is known for producing fine, cool climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Over 30 years’ experience has refined and honed our practices to grow the very best wine from this unique site, with viticulturist, Ant Davenport hand-tending each vine and working closely with winemaker, Geraldine McFaul to maximise quality each season.
[This winery may no longer be operating.] Fulcrum is the fantastic new venture from Pinot Noir rockstar, William Downie and long time friend and colleague, Jason Searle.
Southern Light Vineyards’ sole focus is on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. We have four vineyards, each with their own unique characteristics. The wines from these vineyards together aim to showcase the diversity of styles and tapestry of flavours of the best Australian Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
Our winery is purposefully designed for small batch winemaking, and we have a no compromise approach from budburst to the glass. Our first releases at Southern Light Vineyards come from Ghostgum Vineyard. Situated on top of Main Ridge, it is one of the highest elevation vineyards on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. Here we farm 5.5 hectares of low-yielding Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vines on a gentle, east-facing slope.
Southern Light Vineyards is the culmination of a lifelong pursuit for Joval, who have been involved in every aspect of fine wine for over 50 years, spanning three generations.
Stonier Wines was established at Merricks, on the cool southern edge of Victoria's picturesque Mornington Peninsula, in 1977. One of the first wineries in the region, Stonier first planted Chardonnay vines in 1978, followed by Pinot Noir in 1982. By 1988 the vineyard had expanded to 6 hectares, with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay the core focus for the winery. These two varieties are what Stonier, and the Mornington Peninsula, has built its reputation on.
Taturry leases the 4.5ha vineyard at Mosselini Estate, owned by Wayne and Paula Judson. Wayne Judson is a builder, and created the spectacular building and landscaped grounds in which Luke Curry makes the Taturry wines. His aim is to secure ownership of or lease three vineyards in the Merricks North, Balnarring and/or Main Ridge districts. The Mosselini vineyard came first, but as from 2014, he also has the care of the Applewood Vineyard in Main Ridge (formerly Maritime Estate).
Our winery started in 1997 with three family owned vineyards in Main Ridge, all ten minutes by tractor apart. Over the past 20 years, Martin and Karen Spedding have been the driving force that have taken Ten Minutes by Tractor on to become the lauded winery it is today. Ten Minutes by Tractor has maintained a relentless focus on quality and the production of single vineyard and single block wines that reflect their different aspects, slopes, soils, altitude and cool ocean breezes which flow from Bass Strait, Western Port and Port Phillip through the valleys that crisscross the Mornington Peninsula.
Our journey started as an exploration of the three original vineyards in Main Ridge, today we are helping to lead the development of new vineyard architecture, close planted vineyards, innovations in organic cultivation and viticulture and helping to continue the development of the Mornington Peninsula region as a leading producer of high quality Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in Australia.
