Urban vines

Melburnians love a trip to surrounding wine regions but now they are also bringing wine making into the city. Pop up urban wineries have arrived, following in the footsteps of inner city craft breweries, along with a new breed of unconventional inner city wine events for a new generation of grape admirers.

This new wave of wine parties and the urban pop up winery experiences springing up in the city reflect just how much Melburnians love to try new wines but also want it to be fun and not take themselves too seriously.

Noisy Ritual – is a Melbourne inner city winery where people can sign up to be part of the winemaking process of a batch throughout the year (2015 is producing a Shiraz and a Pinot). The ‘noisy bits’ happen at each of the major parts of the winemaking process throughout the year – stomping, pressing and bottling – with each of these processes being turned into an event with food trucks, drinks and a DJ.

Game of Rhones - takes place in June at the heritage listed meat market buildings in inner city North Melbourne and offers a combative celebration of the classic Rhone origin grape varietals such as Shiraz, Grenache and Viognier. Over 40 producers offer over 100 wines from across Victoria and beyond. The festival is accompanied by a hearty meat feast, including suckling pigs, lamb and other meats to match the wild reds and carnival atmostphere. The Melbourne event has been become so popular it is now expanding to meet demand around Australian and in New Zealand.

Pinot Palooza - is an annual urban festival designed to celebrate Victorian Pinot Noirs. In the spirit of a music festival, Pinot Palooza will return to Melbourne in October 2015, complete with DJs, food trucks and around 100 pinot noirs to sample. Like Game of Rhones, this Melbourne original event has now expanded into a national tour.

Bucketwines – in Victoria’s northern border region along the Murray River, the Chalmer family vineyard experiments with ‘bucket wines’ – each a unique blend made in glass demijohns, using only a bucket, a sieve and a hydrometer. Made for immediate consumption rather than cellaring, ‘bucket wines’ are pure experimentation, each batch being entirely unique. As a result, Melbourne restaurants are picking up bucket wine techniques and creating their own, in partnership with regional wineries such as Chalmers.