Yarra Valley: Melbourne's Wine Country an Hour from the CBD

The Yarra Valley, the cool-climate wine region in the valleys east of Melbourne whose Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and sparkling wine that the morning mists and the afternoon sea breezes of the valley's microclimates create in the Yarra River watershed produce as the wines that have established the Yarra Valley as one of Australia's premium cool-climate wine regions and the most visited wine region from the Melbourne metropolitan market, provides the Melbourne weekend wine escape that the proximity, the vineyard setting, and the quality of the cellar door and the estate dining sustain as the premier day trip destination from Melbourne for the food and wine visitor who wants the rural wine experience without the overnight stay that the more distant wine regions require. The Yarra Valley's position in the national wine quality hierarchy, the Pinot Noir's representation at the premium end of the Australian wine market and the sparkling wine of the Valley's most celebrated producers, sustains the wine tourism that the quality of the wine and the setting of the vineyards in the green rolling hills of the valley country creates for the visitor whose combination of the wine quality expectation and the landscape aesthetic appreciation the Yarra Valley satisfies in the cellar door circuit.

Healesville Sanctuary, the Australian wildlife sanctuary in the Yarra Valley township of Healesville that the platypus and the native wildlife collection has made the most celebrated wildlife sanctuary in Victoria and the destination that the Yarra Valley visitor combines with the wine touring for the wildlife encounter that the platypus viewing and the kangaroo, the wombat, and the Tasmanian devil encounters create as the family destination alongside the adult wine tourism that the cellar door circuit provides in the same Yarra Valley day. The sanctuary's platypus aquarium, the enclosed viewing facility that allows the close observation of the platypus in the river habitat that the sanctuary recreates for the nocturnal animal whose wild behaviour the visitor rarely observes in the natural creek and river environments where the platypus lives but rarely surfaces in the daylight hours that the visitor uses for the wildlife search, provides the most reliable platypus viewing in Australia and the attraction that draws the international wildlife visitor to the Yarra Valley for the singular platypus encounter.

The Yarra Valley cellar door circuit, the loop of the winery visits that takes the visitor from the outer Melbourne edge of the Valley through the Lilydale and the Yering Station and the Coldstream Hills estates to the upper valley wineries of the Tarrawarra and the De Bortoli Yarra Valley estate, creates the day's exploration of the wine region that the valley geography concentrates into the accessible circuit. The winery restaurants that the more developed of the Yarra Valley estates have added to the cellar door function, from the Stones of the Yarra Valley restaurant and the TarraWarra Estate's gallery and restaurant, provide the elevated dining that the wine quality sustains for the wine and food experience that the estate restaurant model creates in the vineyard setting. The combination of the estate restaurant quality and the cellar door wine experience in the single venue visit that the Yarra Valley's most developed estates provide reduces the need for the visitor to drive between the winery and the restaurant and creates the extended estate visit that the quality destination sustains for the afternoon in the vineyard.

The Yarra Valley Railway, the heritage steam railway that operates at the weekends between the Lilydale station and the Yering Gorge through the Yarra Valley countryside, provides the heritage transport experience that adds the nostalgic railway element to the Yarra Valley visit for the family and the heritage enthusiast who combines the steam train experience with the winery and the wildlife visits that the comprehensive Yarra Valley day creates. The railway's connection to the Melbourne suburban rail at Lilydale creates the public transport access to the Yarra Valley that the car-free visitor can use for the initial leg of the journey before the local transport options of the winery shuttle and the bicycle hire that the Lilydale to Healesville Rail Trail sustains provide the mobile access to the Valley's attractions beyond the Lilydale rail terminus.

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