It’s not all big old-world reds at Baileys of Glenrowan. Today a new balance is provided with good food and a marvellous native garden environment to enjoy. Essentials’ Jamie Durrant and Penny Showers explore more.
A lot has changed since 1904 when Richard Bailey and his son Varley first planted new phylloxera-resistant rootstock in their Glenrowan vineyard. The 1890s outbreak that had crippled the Australian wine industry certainly sorted out who were to be the stayers: it took until the 1950s for the industry to recover fully.
Today the Baileys 1904 block plot greets you as arrive at the cellar door, bordering the meandering driveway entrance. That block and the wine handcrafted from it today have earned the winery a five-star James Halliday rating. The fruit is small-bunch fermented in open vats, and basket-pressed on site. The low-yielding vineyard’s tiny berries produce a wine that’s big on fragrance (dark chocolate, ripe cherries and earthy tones) and rich and round on the palate. It’s a big, velvety warm-climate red, as one might expect from the Glenrowan/Warby Range area. We’re happy to report, however, that Baileys does not rest on those ancient laurels alone: a century on, new weekend dining options deliver greater choice in flavour and texture as lighter food and wine influences hold sway. Set in the cellar door’s native garden, under the North East’s late autumn sunshine, lunch couldn’t be happier.
Food and Wine
The café team team has crafted a simple yet impressive menu, built around the kitchen’s wood-fired oven – but not beholden to it. As you’d expect, red pizzas are prominent.
The maple-glazed roasted pumpkin wood-fired pizza with spinach, rich tomato and blue cheese is as good as it gets, and the carefully constructed grazing platter is generous and flavoursome. Umbrella-shaded and seated within the circular outdoor garden cafe piazza, we sample the platter with a slightly chilled Baileys 2013 Fronti – a sweet, summery wine made from muscat (brown frontignac) grapes. This attractive salmon pink wine’s fragrance of musk, lychees and elderflower bursts from the glass, the acid balance keeping the palate perfectly fresh. As the sun shines down, the soft chatter of the three families and two couples dining today helps create a calm and easygoing ambience and a mix of good jazz (think Dizzy Gillespie) and blues from the outdoor speakers adds a friendly touch to the piazza in its garden oasis. The garden’s fine condition suggests that it too enjoys Dizzy’s trumpet.
Vineyard and Warby Range State Park forest views are not too distant. The garden’s flanking weeping peppercorn trees create a nice frame for the cellar door and original winery buildings, one with a row of concrete wine fermenting vats attached. Inside the main cellar door, small groups gather to sample wines. The deals we heard of were excellent value for money so recruiting new members for the wine club must be a cinch!
The warm, welcoming space multitasks as part museum, part fire-side coffee and cake den, gently amplifying the charms of the classic red and aged fortified wines on tasting.
Our pick for most unique and delicate wine on offer is the Baileys 2012 Petite Sirah. A lighter, more graceful style than many Rutherglen durifs (same grape, alternative name), this Petite Sirah is a refined wine with a wildly luminous purple colour in the glass. It’s certainly one to admire. There’s a fine bouquet of blueberries and cranberries balanced with lifted floral accents (violets and dried rose petals). It is, however, very definitely a food wine: its punchy palate of black currants and blueberry, coupled with fine but grippy drying tannins, means you’ll need at least some cheese, or something else rich, to coat your mouth to blance things out. Regardless, it’s a gem of a wine and a good match to the grazing platter.
Baileys Garden
Worthy of a visit in its own right, the environmentally friendly garden and surrounds at Baileys of Glenrowan welcome and embrace you, leading you by the hand through various features such as the slate dining area, ornamental pears, lawns and crape myrtles.
Artist Ralph Bristow, an expert in historical garden restoration and design, created the gardens in 2002 while taking a break from his art career. He devised a pastel and blue colour theme, achieved by planting 50 species, all irrigated by bore water. Ralph, being local to the North East, instinctively chose environmentally friendly species that would survive, thrive and surprise. There’s always something in flower. The large-scale concept plan, displayed in the cellar door, is a popular attraction that delights visitors as much as the Baileys wines. Keen gardeners can be seen studying the planting schedule to identify species that caught their eye in the garden, then busily taking down botanical names.
Bike riders, a breed increasingly fond of the North East’s winding roads and gentle hills, use the gardens to refresh themselves and juvenate their legs before buying some wine and heading on their way.
A strong feature of the garden is the Xanthorrhoea Australis, known as the kangaroo tail or grasstree, which can live to be 600 years old. Its towering thin flowers will grow a crazy centimetre every day. The second most talked about plant is the Acacia cognata, commonly known as the bower wattle. This large, cheerful Snuffleupagus of a shrub offsets the deeper green foliage, displaying shades of bright lime green. In late winter or early spring a cover of soft yellow flowers will adorn the shrub. A few well-placed lemon-scented gums have helped the garden grow into its present enchanting form.
Geoff Grant, gardener at Baileys when the new garden was planted 14 years ago, and formerly a cellar hand, spent 40 years with the original Bailey brothers. He visited just weeks ago, marvelling at the trees and what a splendour the planting had become. Baileys’ manager/winemaker Paul Dahlenburg chuckles on recalling Geoff’s love of pansies. ‘He had to be talked out of planting a pansy bed,’ Paul laughs.
Keith Shimmen, one of the current gardeners, treats the garden with loving care, respecting the master plan. He loves the old peppercorn trees and the Japanese maples and his philosophy regarding the garden is ‘let it grow and it will outperform all the weeds’.
Keith is rightfully proud of the veggie patch he has built and uses grape marc, discarded seeds and skins from the winemaking process, for compost. Keith only plants what the chefs require, and loves it when they come along to pluck some tasty fresh organic vegetables and herbs while creating the mouth-watering items on the Old Block Café menu.
Even the picket fence around the veggie patch tells a story: Keith has cleverly used recycled French oak from inside the old Baileys wine barrels, reinforcing the sense of nostalgia and respect for history at this winery.
Pencil the Baileys garden into your diary; the experience is a must.
Cellar Door: Open every day 10am-5pm, except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and Good Friday.
Baileys Old Block Café: Open weekends for brunch and lunch, 11am-3pm, bookings recommended.
Taminick Gap Road, Glenrowan, Victoria
Tel 03 5766 1600
www.baileysofglenrowan.com.au
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