Day 2: Mornington Peninsula (Kooyong / Ocean Eight)

Sorry been a busy day today so will keep blog quite short – I think the jet lags catching up!

Kooyong:

Visited Kooyong; one of the Mornington Peninsual’s most respected wineries – full of elegance and style – tried across the range from an impressive Pinot Gris (Beurrot) to some fantastic chardonnay’s Farggo being a personal favourite, in the reds there was a range of pinot noirs to which this region is famous for (more later), again difficult to decide but a favourite would be the Ferrous (2005).

Sandro Mosele (winemaker) showed us the full process and impressive barrel storage, again will come back to that.

Ocean Eight:

Ok this was one of the wineries I most wanted to see; lets just say Estbek will be ensuring we list this wines as soon as they are bottled and shipped. Owned by the Aylward family and run by Mike Aylward (his parents set up Kooyong), who is an impressive character – before I arrived I had read up on his wines & style in good detail – I can say all the good words said are from my visit today quite honest!

We tried a sparkling which he makes as a curio & is sold in a few Melbourne restaurants (who have their individual bottling & dosage added!), impressive but sorry completely overshadowed by the next wine – the Verve Chardonnay – vintage 2008; this wine has taken the Australian wine world by storm & it will take our wine list by storm too! We all agreed if you were given this blind you would be hard pressed to even think it was ‘traditional’ Australian style as it is incredibly ‘chablis’ in style – very good acidity & salinity with that oyster shell note & impressive restrained character. Made in much the same methods. Also trying the 2009; which was impressive but not as polished as the 08, with the 2010 tank sample being very much back on track (2009 was a very hot summer here which made the vintage incredibly challenging)

We also tried a range of Pinot Noirs including a set of clonal (so the individual grape types) samples, very interesting, and again as with the chardonnay very much made in a food friendly style & a personal favourite out of the pinot noirs we have tried.

After Ocean Eight we headed a hundred or so Kilometres to the Nagambie Lakes & Tahbilk where we enjoyed a river cruise & dinner … more on that tomorrow!