A family affair

Hickinbotham of Dromana feels like home. From the crackling fire in winter to the long al fresco lunches in summer, there is an oldschool hospitality that the Hickinbotham family offer at their Dromana winery. Andrew and Terryn Hickinbotham were part of the first wave of the Peninsula wine renaissance, planting their vines on the sandy loam slopes looking out over Port Phillip and Mount Martha in 1988. They planted out classic coolclimate varieties around a stand of ancient manna gums. They built their winery and cellar door from recycled materials, including an old school hall they moved from bayside Melbourne to the site. With old bricks, ancient timbers, Victorian-era antiques, and found object light fittings, Hickinbotham feels like it has been there for centuries.

Hickinbotham is an estate winery with almost all the wines made on site from grapes from the vineyard by winemaker James Janda. He believes that wines are made in the vineyard, that careful vine management and allowing the grapes to achieve their potential on the vine allows the winemaker to simply nurture the grapes through winemaking. The wines he makes are classic cool-climate varieties: chardonnay, pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon joined by Spanish and Italian varieties such as tempranillo and lagrein. The bench white is the chardonnay, made unashamedly in the old-school Australian style with malolactic fermentation for the smooth ‘butteryness’ and French oak for a touch of that rich ‘oakiness’. The pinot noir is all about red berries and soft mouthfeel. Again, a classic Peninsula coolclimate wine.

The winemaking was joined by the Hix Microbrewery in 2006. What started out as an attempt to give the winery team a steady supply of knock-off drinks turned into another business within Hickinbotham. Andrew and Terryn’s son Jake is a big fan of German beers and brews his small batches in recycled equipment. The mash tun is an old milk vat. It is heated using a small boiler from an old dry-cleaning plant. The beers mature in vats from an old microbrewery in the city. Jake bottles his beer in traditional German 500ml bottles. His Pilsner, for example, is made with German pilsner malt and hops and has lovely bready, baked cracker aromas, clean bitterness and fine fizz.

The Hickinbotham family make drinks to be enjoyed with food and they do this with great hospitality in their Mintaro Restaurant. It is named after the exquisite black slate fireplace rescued from a demolished Brighton mansion and made from slate from Mintaro near the Clare Valley in South Australia. The menu is packed with crowd-pleasing dishes such as corn fritters, linguine carbonara made with house-smoked pork, slow-cooked lamb, and seafood dishes from golden fish and chips to yellowfin tuna tataki. Finish with a lemon meringue pie or seasonal fruit crumble. Combined with live music on weekends, dining at Hickinbotham is to experience family-friendly fare at its best.

RICHARD CORNISH

HICKINBOTHAM OF DROMANA 194 Nepean Highway, Dromana hickinbotham.biz