Cruise Ship Friendly Yarra Valley Wine Tour with Port Pickup
Description
Our wine tour is a social, down to earth and laid back trip that offers great wines, gin,cider and more. And we have a laugh doing it! We'll pick you up in the morning and focus on everyone getting to know each other. We get everyone to add to a Spotify playlist so we have some tunes and spend the first hour just chatting! Everything is always flexible with our tour, and we always aims to give people choices, but since we are on a bit of a time constraint, we have constructed this itinerary to showcase the best of the best of the Yarra Valley, but also showing a few hidden gems. Generally we do 2 wineries with tastings included, a restaurant at your own expense, and finally a round of drinks on us @ the scenic Domaine Chandon. We don't include lunch in the price, so we go to a restaurant (Quarters) where you can pay what you want to eat/drink. That all said, we ask the group in the morning if they would like anything different and have been known to split the group up if need be!
Tour Options
Itinerary
The following are a list of wineries and venues we could go to. We do not go to all of these. The tour includes tastings at 4 of these venues , with a 5th being a lunch stop that doesn’t include a tasting. The itinerary can change each day based on what’s open/availabe. We will drive for 55 minutes to our first venue. After about 45 minutes its starts getting scenic!
Try 5-6 wines and an incredible Pink Lady Apple Cider at this very small, boutique and family run vineyard.
We also provide cheese platters here to compliment your tasting. Incredible views. Laid back type of winery with an incredible range of tastes. From Medium bodied reds, to pinot grigio, from sweet desert wines to sparkling, from unfiltered pinot noirs, to Chardonnay to heavy Shiraz and fortified wines. We also provide cheese platters here to compliment your tasting.
Due to this place not really accepting tour groups, we can't actually generally include drinks here. If we can sense that there are some of the group that reaaalllly want to go to Chandon...what we do is after lunch instead of taking 30m minutes to just relax and enjoy the lunch venue itself, we drive those who want to check out Chandon and essentially leave you there for 30-40 minutes. This is our way around it. So we can do it, but it definitely will be at your own expense and is not included in the price. A little frustrating, but we are literally the only tour that even offers that! We find all people want to do there is just have a glass and enjoy the scenery anyway, so 30-40 minutes Is plenty of time!
Here we have lunch. The restaurant is called 'Quarters' and is located on St Huberts Estates winery. The entire menu is QR coded or you can order with wait staff. Lunch is not included in the price so this would be at your own expense. The food is incredible here. I would allow anything from 10-40$ here, depending on how hungry you are. There is something for everyone here. Pizzas, burgers, steaks, ribs, vegan dishes, celiac friendly, creative salads,...really nice food! The venue itself is really impressive and they also have a cellar door to do wine tastings and whiskey tasting, as well as an Indigenous art museum all done by First Nations people around Victoria. We often split the group up after lunch for those that want to explore the venue...or those that want to try Chandon.
Here we try 4 of their Gins on a paddle, with tonic or soda to mix with it whilst being told how hey make it in their new impressive distillery. That said, if you don't like gin or want something else, we can get you any type of drink there. You can even cross the road and we can arrange a private wine tasting at Payton and Jones if you really want to keep the day Wine focused.
Highlights
What's included
Traveller Ratings
Important Information
- Infants are required to sit on an adult’s lap
- Service animals allowed
- Public transportation options are available nearby
- Suitable for all physical fitness levels
- TOURS IN MARCH: WESTERDAM 4TH MARCH, CELEBRITY EDGE 10TH MARCH, ROYAL PRINCESS 11TH MARCH, WESTERDAM 28TH MARCH
- This is a public group tour where you’ll be joined by others. You can book this tour however as a large group and we can discuss doing a private tour for your group
- We have 2 vehicles that run this tour. We primarily use a 21 seater bus but purposefully dont fill it up to still give the tour an intimate and small-group feel. We only allow 18 people max book. We also run a second vehicle of 11 seats which is a smaller van. If group size is important to you, please let us know so we can best accomodate you!
- We generally do not have space for luggage of any sort.
- In this itinerary we will only visit 4 venues of the 5 listed. This is due to some places being closed on certain days. We generally DONT go to the Four Pillars Gin Distillery.
- We accept all ages from 0 years old through to 110! Baby all be required to sit on laps however.
- We pick you up from the carpark where you depart from the ship at STATION PIER..
Reviews(10)
They cancelled tour because not enough people. Had to do excursion through cruise ship. HIGHLY DISAPPOINTED!!!
Hey Laurie We deeply apologise. With all The Middle East stuff going on it has meant that our cruise ship version of our wine tours have really been slow for us. You were the only People on the tour booked and we reached out 4 days prior to understand your timings so we could potentially move you to our standard/non cruiseship tour. When we worked out that wouldn’t work, we offered a refund as one solution, but then offered to pay for taxis to get you to the ship back on time. Something that would’ve cost us more than what you would have paid us! It seemed you were agreeable with the refund concept but you also seemed appreciative of us trying to solve the issue. So just a tiny bit surprised to read this. Terribly sorry about this, and this is the first time we’ve ever needed to cancel. We also have You a heads-up a few days before and we were the ones that suggested you speak with the cruiseship excursion desk to plan another trip. So sorry we caused this inconvenience though! We understand it would’ve been very concerning to read and process.
Matt was our tour guide and from the very first moment he met the assorted people gathered for the trip he was immediately engaging, friendly, inquisitive, and just an explosion of joy and effusiveness. He focused on making human connections. As the tour progressed he let us know before every stop what we would be see and what to expect. Additionally he would make suggestions for what to try and shared previous visitors experiences and what other guests had experienced and enjoyed. Overall it was a day well spent.
Very entertaining day with Peter. Only self, partner and two friends in a mini van. Flexible on timing at each winery. Relaxing way to tour.
Excellent tour with Todd, a fun and friendly guide. Super friendly guide with great food, wine and gin choices! Highly recommended
Great experience, friendly host Todd, flexible itinerary and great wines. A fab day out for all involved. Time at each winery to enjoy
We spent 7 hours driving from the cruise port through the Yarra Valley sampling wines from Soumah, Tokar and Yering Farm as well as sparkling wine from Chandon. We had pizza for lunch at St Hubert Estate and it was excellent. Matt, our driver, was friendly and knowledgeable about Melbourne and Yarra and related his experience in Australia as a transplant from the UK. We were in a comfortable 11 person van for only four passengers. Absolutely would recommend this tour.
Todd was wonderful. Great “be of service “ attitude.”. Very engaging. He made a long fun day very enjoyable.
This tour was outstanding. Matthew, our guide and driver was perfect for the job. He had great commentary and interaction with the group, definitely a people person. We stopped at 2 wineries with a total of 11 or 13 tastings. All were excellent and if I thought I could get the wine home to the US in my luggage, I would have purchased some. We also went to a gin distillery for a tasting of 4 different gins and lastly a chocolate factory with more tastings than I could count. We booked this tour for the journey through the countryside and I must say, it was beautiful. The small group, only 6 passengers, made this tour particularly intimate and more enjoyable. Thank you Matthew for a wonderful day
Tour was fantastic, more than we expected and great value. Got a great taste of Melbourne. Our guide Matthew was fantastic, engaging and knowledgeable
We recently did this tour whilst in Melbourne on a cruise ship. Andrew from the company was very professional and provided information and itinerary ideas. We were a group of 4 couples. Our driver Aydin was very informative and also very funny with lots of stories. Yarra Vallej is a beautiful area. We visited 4 wineries and had time for a short photo stop at St Kilda before being taken back to the ship in plenty of time. Would definitely recommend this company.
