Balgownie Estate Yarra Valley — Restaurant in Melbourne

Balgownie Estate Winery, Yarra Valley

My wife and I had the pleasure of staying at Balgownie Estate Winery in Yarra Valley for Valentine’s Day, and from the moment we arrived on Friday afternoon, the experience was nothing short of exceptional.

Arrival & Accommodation

Check-in was seamless, with the reception staff being incredibly welcoming and making us feel right at home. We stayed in a one-bedroom suite, which was modern, clean, and extremely comfortable—a perfect retreat for a romantic getaway.

Valentine’s Day Dinner at Restaurant 1309

For dinner, we dined at Restaurant 1309, indulging in a carefully curated six-course Valentine’s Day menu. Each dish was beautifully crafted and highlighted the quality of local ingredients: • Starter: Traditional Olive ascolane, a great way to begin the meal. • Tasting Plate: Featuring ‘Buxton Lane’ Gin-cured Trout, a feta filo pastry, freshly shucked oysters, and local grass-fed carpaccio—the carpaccio was a standout for me. • Hiromasa Kingfish Crudo: The fish was delicate, fresh, and perfectly prepared. • Palate Cleanser: A beautiful peach sorbet that was light and refreshing. • Main Course: We both opted for the lamb backstrap, served with pressed lamb neck, pea purée, fondant potato, braised shallot, and baby carrot with a river mint jus. It was perfectly cooked and bursting with flavour. • Dessert: A spectacular trio featuring a heart-shaped shortcake, raspberry macarons, and a ‘Soleo’ milk chocolate shortbread with hazelnut praline—a truly decadent finish.

To accompany the meal, we enjoyed a bottle of 2020 Estate Shiraz, which was rich, smooth, and paired beautifully with every course.

Breakfast & Casual Dining

The next morning, we returned to Restaurant 1309 for breakfast, where we were treated to a magnificent buffet with a fantastic selection of hot and cold options.

For lunch, we had a casual meal before our wine tasting, sharing rockling tacos and sliders. The tacos were so incredible that we returned for dinner to have them again—definitely a must-try!

Wine Tasting Experience

One of the highlights of our stay was the complimentary wine tasting, included as part of our accommodation booking. We sampled a range of Balgownie Estate’s wines and ended up taking home several bottles to kickstart our personal wine collection. Our favourites were the 2005 Estate Shiraz and, surprisingly, the 2019 Sauvignon Blanc—despite not being big white wine drinkers, this one may have converted us!

Final Thoughts

Our stay at Balgownie Estate Winery was absolutely magnificent. The exceptional service, luxurious accommodation, outstanding food, and high-quality wines made for an unforgettable experience. We will definitely be returning and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a relaxing, indulgent escape in the...

It's a really lovely place to stay but check out is 10am and what your package includes isn't made clear. We stayed one night on a half board package deal. We booked for 2 adults and 1 child but even though we booked for 3 people and half board our child's meal was not included. The rooms are 2 bedroom mini apartments and brand new with great facilities, modern and clean. The sofa bed was made up on arrival (which hotels often don't do in advance). They've almost thought of everything. Apart from the stairs up or down to each room, not great with suitcases and no porter delivery. The food was very good, the 2 course set menu for dinner as half board was really nice. We had the porterhouse steaks. Sides (which you kind of need) unfortunately were extra, so was our daughters dinner, unexpectedly. A disappointing surprise especially as a lot of hotels offer kids eat free. Having read a few reviews on here though, it seems they normally do something special, like a pudding at mealtime for birthdays. It was my birthday, which my wife made them aware of (and purchased a bottle of champagne for our room) but nothing special was put on at dinner. Perhaps forgotten. Breakfast was good quality and many great options, from homemade baked beans to fresh pancakes, it was all very tasty and hot where it should be. Sausages weren't very good but bacon was thick and good quality. Large cup mushrooms were a nice touch and also the potatoes were tasty. For check in we arrived at 4.30pm. As it was my birthday we had intended to do a wine tasting on arrival. The last wine tasting was at 4.30pm though. We missed it. Unfortunately you can't book the wine tasting online in advance. Nor does it have the times online. They don't email you with the times or highlight the last one after booking either. So getting one between checking in and out is clearly a bit pot luck. Very disappointing. Check out is also 10am so it doesn't give you much time to get a wine tasting in in the morning plus 9am is a little early for me. Check out was a frustration. Breakfast is until 10am but check out is also 10am, which just doesn't make sense. If you finish breakfast at 10am, you can't be checking out at the same time. We felt hassled out. The housekeeper was banging on the door to clean just after 10, then we got calls as well. Not very impressed. Check out in all the best hotels in the world is a standard 11am-12pm. For the price of the stay 10am is unjustified in my opinion. A shame these few things spoiled what would have been a lovely experience as it's a beautiful area and a lovely hotel. Could be 5 stars but lost 2 for check out stress/time, wine tasting lack of info and extra costs. Not a five...

We made the decision for Balgownie Estate Yarra Valley to be our wedding venue and all we can say is how thankful and grateful we are to the venue and all the team at Balgownie.

We were assigned Keely as our events coordinator and throughout the entire planning process, she was quick and accommodating to all of our requests to help turn our dream wedding into a reality, so far as to even allowing us to have a jumping castle set up on their outdoor deck area for our guests to enjoy!

To say anything other than outstanding would be an understatement when it comes everything that Balgownie treated us with. The hotel reception were so helpful when it came to assisting our older guests who needed transport to and from their rooms via buggy. Despite me making things complicated with how I decided to book the rooms for our bridal party accommodation (requiring my bridal party to change rooms), they were super helpful ensuring that the rooms were configured correctly based on my requests. Since all the rooms were recently renovated as well, everyone was thoroughly impressed with the accommodation!

One massively important thing for us was ensuring our guests were supplied with pre-poured drinks at the conclusion of our ceremony as we didnt want people waiting around for their drinks to be poured and this was delivered with ease by them. The team also ensured they spent the time to analyse and understand our wedding run sheet, accommodating extremely tight timing regarding food service and they knocked it out of the park. It was extremely important for us that our guests did not wait an hour to 1.5 hours between starts and main service, and balgownie turned this around and delivered starters at 5:50 and mains by 6:30 so no one was left waiting around for food!

Another special thanks goes out to Lisa, the events coordinator on the night. You can tell just by talking to her she absolutely loves what she does and put our mind at ease on everything in the impromptu rehearsal the night before. She is an absolute asset!

Many people look back on their weddings and say oh we spent too much, this and that went wrong etc, but for us, Balgownie Estate delivered us our dream wedding and we could not fault it in a single way.

To everyone else at Balgownie, hopefully you know who you are and see this, thank you from the bottoms of our hearts, everything you did contributed to such an unforgettable evening for not only my partner and I, but all...