By Renee Wood
After a two year hiatus, wine lovers will now get the chance to celebrate the winter solstice and roam, sip and taste what some of the Yarra Valley’s smallest wineries have to offer.
The Shortest Lunch 2022 is now back with 12 family owned, boutique wineries opening their arms and cellar doors for a winter flavoured feast.
The two day event on Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 June is run by the Yarra Valley Smaller Wineries group and President Daniel Tokar said everyone is thrilled to see its return, cementing it into the region’s calendar.
“It’s all about warm, bite sized entrée style food and the idea is it’s a roaming festival where you go from one participating cellar door to another and you try some wine… and go on to the next,” Mr Tokar said.
Live music, good food and wine tastings are the top ticket items.
Mr Tokar said in previous years the lunch has encouraged a lot of people to come and experience the Valley.
“The Smaller Wineries’ main focus is to bring people to the valley to advocate visitation to cellar doors, even if they’re not members, the idea is if they come into the valley it benefits everyone in the region, wineries, cafes – the lot.”
This year marks the 21st year for the event and it’s certainly a celebration after the last two years have been decimated by the pandemic.
“It helps to support the smaller wineries who might not see as much traffic as the main stream wineries,” he said.
“Most scraped through by the skin of their teeth… It was tough for a lot of the wineries, especially the smaller family owned ones to get through the winter months – even most of the last few years was nearly written off.”
Steels Gate winery will be participating in the day for the first time after recently becoming a member.
Winemaker Matthew Davis said it’s great that more Dixon’s Creek vineyards will be part of the day, including Sutherland Estate.
“We all offer quite different experiences and different things so it’s nice to have a little hub down this way where people can easily roam from one to the other, like they do when they head out to Seville and Maroondah highway,” Mr Davis said.
Like all participants, Steels Gate will have part of its menu to sample for the attendees, acting as a taste tester for what people can enjoy when they return.
“If you come out on a wine tour, you’ll do a meal at one place and then you do tastings at others – you don’t necessarily get to sample everything,” he said.
Also forming off the back of the small winery ethos, you’ll get to meet the winemakers themselves, something that enriches your winery visit.
“From people that really know their wine, they’ll ask questions about what your malolactic fermentation was, whereas with the general punter often you’re teaching them for the first time.”
The event has previously supported CFA crews with donations made to by equipment from the ticket sales.
This year the group has chosen to support the Make-A-Wish Foundation to hopefully connect with a local family and make a child’s dreams come true.
“The idea is always to give back to the community and one of the big ethos for the smaller wineries is we preach locality so we thought let’s make something worthwhile and meaningful,” Mr Tokar said.
Participating wineries include Billanook Estate, Boat O’Craigo, Brumfield Winery, Fin Wines, Kellybrook Winery, Payne’s Rise, Seville Hill, Steels Gate, Sutherland Estate, Tokar Estate, Whispering Hills and Yering Farm Wines.
For more information visit https://www.yarravalleysmallerwineries.com.au/pages/shortest-lunch
