What is a cellar door in Australia?
A cellar door in Australia is a tasting room at a winery. Most Australian wineries offer free tastings of their wines in the hope visitors will buy bottles afterwards.
When you’re driving around an Australian wine region such as the McLaren Vale or Swan Valley, the phrase ‘cellar door’ is likely to crop up. Specifically, in regards to opening times.
Cellar door definition
Cellar door is a common term in Australian wine tourism. It is nothing to do with actual cellars, however. The meaning of cellar door in Australia is essentially “tasting room”. Many wineries are open to visitors. Selling the wines on-site is a good way of cutting out the middleman. It can also lead to visitors seeking out the wines in bottle shops when they get home.
But Australian wineries tend to operate on a try before you buy policy. They let visitors come to the winery, and sample a few of the wines in small measures. This is usually free of charge, in the hope that the visitor will then decide to buy a bottle or two afterwards.
Visiting a cellar door in Australia
The room or building where this takes place is called the cellar door. In some wineries, it’s little more than a spare room with a wooden counter. In bigger wineries like McGuigan’s, it can be a massive open plan affair with room for several tour groups at one time. Then there are one-offs like the d’Arenberg Cube in the McLaren Vale, which is enormous and defies description.
Cellar door wine tasting in smaller wine regions
In smaller, underrated wine regions, such as the Grampians, King Valley or Mildura in Victoria, it can be advisable to phone in advance.
In bigger regions that are close to big cities, such as the Hunter Valley near Sydney or Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne, there will always be several cellar doors where you can just rock up without an appointment.
Cellar doors: Wine tourism in Australia
It’s this gregarious attitude to wine tasting that makes wine tourism in Australia such an enjoyable thing to do. Wine regions have become holiday destinations in their own right, too. In the Hunter Valley you can enjoy hot air ballooning, horse-riding tours or craft breweries. Margaret River, meanwhile, combines wine tasting with cave tours and a beach where you can paddle in the shallows with stingrays.
Just be sure to keep an eye out for cellar doors when you’re passing through, and you can get some good stuff instead of a box of goon…
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