The Best Wineries In Geelong And The Bellarine Peninsula

Whether you’re a total novice looking for a fun day out on the road with friends, or a total oenophile plotting a serious, wine-focused itinerary, these five Geelong and Bellarine Peninsula wineries will stand you in good stead.

With its cool maritime climate, Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula are known to produce low yields of high-quality fruit that makes for some award-winning wines. The region is known for its pinot noir, chardonnay and shiraz varietals, as well as its abundance of boutique, family-run wineries and warm hospitality. Whether you’re after a show-stopping lunch venue, a quirky cellar door, or a tasting in quaint countryside surrounds, these five wineries deliver.

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Provenance Wines

Not only is Provenance rated a 5 Red Star Winery by the illustrious Halliday Wine Companion – a title that also awarded it Best Value Winery of the Year back in 2019 – but the winery’s setting in the old, heritage-listed Fyansford Paper Mill is wildly beautiful. Located on the banks of the Barwon River, the refurbished bluestone buildings date back to the 1870s, and now house galleries, studios and a cafe, as well as the Provenance winery, restaurant and cellar door.

Swing by for a Tasting Experience, and sample six or eight wines, either by themselves, or matched with bite-sized chef-prepared food pairings. Or make an evening (or afternoon) of it, with dinner or lunch at the winery restaurant, where there’s a strong focus on native ingredients and seasonal produce, with veggies sharing as much of the limelight as meat and fish.

The winery’s grapes are sourced from the Geelong, Ballarat, Macedon and Henty regions, to produce a range of pinot noir, chardonnay, shiraz and riesling that showcase crisp natural acidity.

Provenance winery Geelong — From vineyard to glass, Provenance preserves the identity of place.

Address: 100 Lower Paper Mills Rd, Fyansford, Vic, 3218

Phone number: +61 3 5222 3422

Website: provenancewines.com.au

Nicol’s Paddock

A small, family-run winery and restaurant, situated just on the cusp of Geelong, Nicol’s is known for its warm hospitality, whether you’re here for a sit-down dinner of shared small plates, or simply popping by to enjoy a tasting in the boutique winery’s cellar door. Formerly known as Saint Regis, Nicol’s has been in the same family since the first plantings back in 1997. Original vigneron Peter Nicol is still tending to the winery’s chardonnay, pinot noir, and estate-grown shiraz grapes, grown in Waurn Ponds’ rich limestone soil, but now the second generation of the Nicol family has also jumped in to helm the Nicol’s Paddock Restaurant.

The winery itself is totally charming, its entrance framed by a vine-wrapped pergola blanketed with string lights and scattered with picnic tables, parasols and wine barrels repurposed as tables, that offer prime views of the estate’s shiraz vineyards. The rustic and cosy ambiance continues inside, with simple brick and timber interiors.

Nicol's Paddock — Join Nicol’s Paddock for a taste in their cellar door.

Address: 35 Waurn Ponds Dr, Waurn Ponds, Vic, 3216

Phone number: +61 432 085 404

Website: nicolspaddock.com.au

Scotchmans Hill

A stalwart of the Bellarine Peninsula’s wine scene, Scotchmans Hill has been pleasing punters with its cool maritime climate wines since its first vintage in 1990, and has consistently featured among the pages of the Halliday Wine Companion. Housed within the cosiest and smartly furnished environs of what feels like a country cottage, you can take a seated wine tasting from the comfort of one of the sofas, and feel as if you’ve popped round to a friend’s house for drinks (albeit one with impeccable taste). Try five of the winery’s current vintages for $10pp, or six wines from Scotchmans back vintage cellar reserve for $15pp (tasting fees waived with the purchase of takeaway wine). And if you’ve already reached peak wine indulgence then take the edge off with one of the winery’s platters, take-away picnic boxes, or a long lazy lunch at Scotchmans’ patio bistro.

Address: 190 Scotchmans Rd, Drysdale, Vic, 3222

Phone number: +61 3 5251 4431

Website: scotchmans.com.au

Scotchmans Hill has been producing premium cool maritime climate wines since 1982.

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Oakdene

If you like your wineries with plenty of character then schedule a visit to Oakdene. For starters, the cellar door at this Bellarine Peninsula winery is unconventional, constructed to resemble an upside down house. And Oakdene’s gardens and grounds are dotted with items that would otherwise have been destined for the bin (old bicycles, rusty farm equipment) and have instead been upcycled into sculptures and decorative features.

But don’t be deceived by this winery’s quirks – it takes the science and art of winemaking seriously: Oakdene has in fact been named an ‘outstanding’ winery by the James Halliday Wine Companion. And its small team of knowledgeable and friendly staff showcase Oakdene’s premium wines without pomp or pretence.

Oakdene Vineyards is the ideal romantic getaway.

Address: 255 Grubb Rd, Wallington, Vic, 3222

Phone number: +61 3 5255 1255

Website: oakdene.com.au

Jack Rabbit

For sweeping views over both Port Phillip Bay and a carpet of pinot noir and cabernet vines, it doesn’t get much better than Jack Rabbit. You can gorge on both by taking a seat on the modern winery’s restaurant deck, or peering out of the floor-to-ceiling windows inside. There’s an ambitious modern Australian menu, lined with dishes such as oxtail and local ricotta salata tortellini with parsnip cream, savoury oil and parsnip crisps, or Hiramasa kingfish crudo with Davidson plum, finger lime, coconut, verjuice and karkalla. The winery also houses a more casual all-day cafe, the House of Jack Rabbit, which is open for brunch and lunch and also boasts sweeping vistas over the blue of the bay and the green of the vines from its deck.

Address: 85 McAdams Ln, Bellarine, Vic, 3221

Phone number: +61 425 750 655

Website: jackrabbitvineyard.com.au

Video credit: Visit Victoria/Tourism Australia

The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.

There are no kangaroos back in Chicago: they’re all here in the Grampians/Gariwerd . In the heart of the Grampians National Park’s main gateway town, Halls Gap, pods of eastern greys are eating grass beside my parked rental car beneath the stars. Next morning, when I see the backyard of my rented villa on the edge of town for the first time, there are kangaroos feeding beside a slow-moving creek, lined with river red gums.

Five hundred metres up the road, 50 or so of them are eating by the side of the road in a paddock. I pull over to watch and spot three emus. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead towards the tall green mountains just beyond town.

‘Kee-ow, keee-oww’… their calls fuse with the maniacal cackle of a kookaburra (or 10). Gawd, how I’ve missed the sound of them. Far above, a wedge-tailed eagle watches, and there you go: the ‘great birds of Australia’ trifecta, all half a kay from the town limits.

Exchanging city chaos for country calm

kangaroos near Halls Gap, Grampians National Park — The park is renowned for its significant diversity of native fauna species. (Image: Visit Victoria/Robert Blackburn)

I’ve come to the Grampians to disconnect, but the bush offers a connection of its own. This isn’t just any bush, mind you. The Grampians National Park is iconic for many reasons, mostly for its striking sandstone mountains – five ridges run north to south, with abrupt, orange slopes which tumble right into Halls Gap – and for the fact there’s 20,000 years of traditional rock art. Across these mountains there are more than 200 recorded sites to see, created by the Djab Wurrung, Jardwadjali and Gunditjmara peoples. It’s just like our outback… but three hours from Melbourne.

I’ve come here for a chance at renewal after the chaos of my life in America’s third-largest city, Chicago, where I live for now, at the whim of a relative’s cancer journey. Flying into Melbourne’s airport, it only takes an hour’s drive to feel far away from any concept of suburbia. When I arrive in Halls Gap two hours later, the restaurant I’m eating at clears out entirely by 7:45pm; Chicago already feels a lifetime ago.

The trails and treasures of the Grampians

sunrise at Grampians National Park /Gariwerd — Grampians National Park /Gariwerd covers almost 2000 square kilometres. (Image: Ben Savage)

Though the national park covers almost 2000 square kilometres, its best-known landmarks are remarkably easy to access. From my carpark here, among the cockatoos and kangaroos on the fringe of Halls Gap, it only takes 60 seconds’ driving time before I’m winding my way up a steep road through rainforest, deep into the mountains.

Then it’s five minutes more to a carpark that serves as a trailhead for a hike to one of the park’s best vantage points, The Pinnacles . I walk for an hour or so, reacquainting myself with the smells and the sounds of the Aussie bush, before I reach it: a sheer cliff’s edge lookout 500 metres up above Halls Gap.

walking through a cave, Hollow Mountain — Overlooking the vast Grampians landscape from Hollow Mountain. (Image: Robert Blackburn)

There are hikes and there are lookouts and waterfalls all across this part of the park near town. Some are a short stroll from a carpark; others involve long, arduous hikes through forest. The longest is the Grampians Peaks Trail , Victoria’s newest and longest iconic walk, which runs 160 kilometres – the entire length of Grampians National Park.

Local activities operator Absolute Outdoors shows me glimpses of the trail. The company’s owner, Adrian Manikas, says it’s the best walk he’s done in Australia. He says he’s worked in national parks across the world, but this was the one he wanted to bring his children up in.

“There’s something about the Grampians,” he says, as he leads me up a path to where there’s wooden platforms for tents, beside a hut looking straight out across western Victoria from a kilometre up in the sky (these are part of the guided hiking options for the trail). “There are things out here that you won’t see anywhere else in Australia.” Last summer, 80 per cent of the park was damaged by bushfire, but Manikas shows me its regrowth, and tells me of the manic effort put in by volunteers from town – with firefighters from all over Australia – to help save Halls Gap.

wildflowers in Grampians National Park — Spot wildflowers. (Image: Visit Victoria)

We drive back down to Halls Gap at dusk to abseil down a mountain under the stars, a few minutes’ walk off the main road into town. We have headlamps, but a full moon is enough to light my way down. It takes blind faith to walk backwards down a mountain into a black void, though the upside is I can’t see the extent of my descent.

Grampians National Park at sunset. (Image: Wine Australian)

The stargazing is ruined by the moon, of course, but you should see how its glow lights up the orange of the sandstone, like in a theme park. When I’m done, I stand on a rocky plateau drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Aussie animals who prefer nighttime. I can see the streets of Halls Gap off in the distance on this Friday night. The restaurants may stay open until 8pm tonight.

What else is on offer in The Grampians?

a boat travelling along the Wimmera River inDimboola — Travelling along the Wimmera River in Dimboola. (Image: Chris McConville)

You’ll find all sorts of adventures out here – from rock climbing to canoeing to hiking – but there’s more to the Grampians than a couple of thousand square kilometres of trees and mountains. Halls Gap may be known to most people, but what of Pomonal, and Dimboola, and Horsham? Here in the shadow of those big sandstone mountains there are towns and communities most of us don’t know to visit.

And who knew that the Grampians is home to Victoria’s most underrated wine region ? My disconnection this morning comes not in a forest, but in the tasting rooms and winery restaurants of the district. Like Pomonal Estate, barely 10 minutes’ drive east of Halls Gap, where UK-born chef Dean Sibthorp prepares a locally caught barramundi with lentil, pumpkin and finger lime in a restaurant beside the vines at the base of the Grampians. Husband-and-wife team Pep and Adam Atchison tell me stories as they pour their prize wines (shiraz is the hero in these parts).

dining at Pomonal Estate — Dine in a restaurant beside vines at Pomonal Estate. (Image: Tourism Australia)

Three minutes’ drive back down the road, long-time mates Hadyn Black and Darcy Naunton run an eclectic cellar door out of a corrugated iron shed, near downtown Pomonal. The Christmas before last, half the houses in Pomonal burnt down in a bushfire, but these locals are a resilient lot.

The fires also didn’t stop the construction of the first art centre in Australia dedicated to environmental art in a nature-based precinct a little further down the road (that’s Wama – the National Centre for Environmental Arts), which opened in July. And some of the world’s oldest and rarest grape vines have survived 160 years at Best’s Wines, outside the heritage town of Great Western. There’s plantings here from the year 1868, and there’s wines stored in century-old barrels within 150-year-old tunnels beneath the tasting room. On the other side of town, Seppelt Wines’ roots go back to 1865. They’re both only a 30-minute drive from Halls Gap.

Salingers of Great Western — Great Western is a charming heritage town. (Image: Griffin Simm)

There’s more to explore yet; I drive through tiny historic towns that barely make the map. Still part of the Grampians, they’re as pretty as the mountains behind them: full of late 19th-century/early 20th-century post offices, government offices and bank buildings, converted now to all manner of bric-a-brac stores and cafes.

The Imaginarium is one, in quirky Dimboola, where I sleep in the manager’s residence of an old National Australia Bank after a gourmet dinner at the local golf club, run by noted chef and teacher, Cat Clarke – a pioneer of modern Indigenous Australian cooking. Just south, I spend an entire afternoon at a winery, Norton Estate Wines, set on rolling calico-coloured hills that make me think of Tuscany, chit-chatting with owners Chris and Sam Spence.

Being here takes me back two decades, when I lived here for a time. It had all seemed as foreign as if I’d driven to another planet back then (from Sydney/Warrane), but there seemed something inherently and immediately good about this place, like I’d lived here before.

And it’s the Australian small-town familiarity of the Grampians that offers me connection back to my own country. Even in the better-known Halls Gap, Liz from Kerrie’s Creations knows I like my lattes with soy milk and one sugar. And while I never do get the name of the lady at the local Ampol station, I sure know a lot about her life.

Kookaburras on a tree — Kookaburras are one of some 230 bird species. (Image: Darren Donlen)

You can be a local here in a day; how good is that? In Chicago, I don’t even know who my neighbour is. Though each day at dusk – when the kangaroos gather outside my villa, and the kookaburras and the black cockatoos shout out loud before settling in to sleep – I prefer the quieter connection I get out there in the bush, beneath these orange mountains.

A traveller’s checklist

Staying there

Sleep beside the wildlife on the edge of Halls Gap at Serenity .

Playing there

abseiling down Hollow Mountain — Hollow Mountain is a popular abseiling site.

Go abseiling under the stars or join a guided hike with Absolute Outdoors . Visit Wama , Australia’s first environmental art centre. Check out Dimboola’s eccentric Imaginarium .

Eating there

steak, naan bread and beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap serves a great steak on naan bread.

Eat world-class cuisine at Pomonal Estate . Dine and stay at much-revered icon Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. The ‘steak on naan’ at Halls Gap brewhouse Paper Scissors Rock , can’t be beat.

Dunkeld Arboretum in Grampians National Park — The serene Dunkeld Arboretum.

For Halls Gap’s best breakfasts head to Livefast Cafe . Sip local wines at Great Western’s historic wineries, Best’s Wines , Seppelt Wines and Norton Estate Wines .

two glasses of beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Sink a cold one at Paper Scissors Rock.

The best wineries in Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula