Those of us who live in Victoria have had it hard in the last few months, lockdowns, masks, lots of covid and sadly many deaths, and a morning ritual of not doing anything until the daily numbers came through.
As I write this we have now reached 50 days of no community transmission, but an outbreak in NSW has us anxious.
I am a travel agent and love to travel. My big trip this year to Scandinavia and the Arctic went the way of all travel, and I have dealt with refunds, clients who also lost their travel, most good to deal with, some less so.
A friend and I planned a trip a few months ago, hoping we could make it, and make it we did! Four days in the King Valley. We left on Monday, it took us 3 1/2 hours to get to Whitfield, we went via Yea, Yarck and Mansfield. There is a service station, King Vally fine foods, a general store, caravan park and a cafe in the town.
We stayed at LussoKV a lovely 3 bedroom home in Whitfield. It is across the paddock from Dal Zotto winery and close walking distance to the local pub, the Mountainview.
King Valley was new to me, but I soon learnt that it is a fabulous part of Victoria.The Pizzini family run their winery and the pub. We ate at the pub a couple of times, good food and obviously a good selection of wine, and there is a platypus in the small creek by some of the tables. Since covid the winery has changed the way they do wine tastings- my friend Mary and I sat at a table to ourselves and we had the choice of a $10 tasting for their well known wines or $20 for a mix, including some with age, we chose the latter. Chas took us through the wines, we had to help the local economy by buying a few, a Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, and a Per Gli Angeli, a vin santo type wine. He also said we should visit Darling wines, the family have been on the land for 100 years, a short walk for us from Lusso, we had walked past it twice on our daily walks. More rustic, Grace the daughter of the owner John, took us through their wines, a Nebbiolo on their list but predominantly French grapes and reasonable prices.
We ventured up to Oxley to visit Sam Miranda for lunch and Milawa cheese co for their cheeses. They have a delicious goat Camembert.
Our neighbour Dal Zotto has a bike and picnic deal called Pedal to Prosecco- the bikes are big and heavy so one needs to be well versed on riding a bike, I am not. The picnic lunch held Prosecco, smallgoods and some fabulous cheeses plus decent gluten free bread for those with fructose issues, like me.
We had lunch at the winery another day, they do pizza and pasta, great gluten free base, fungi pizza without the onion, and a lovely Rosato to drink.
It was good for the soul to get out of Melbourne, leave those masks behind for a few days, spend some money in the regions and check out our state, there is much to see and experience.
19th December 2020.
