FOOD

HERE’S TO GREAT TASTE

Incredible food experiences are a way of life in this lush valley. Blessed with a bounty of amazing food artisans and extraordinary chef talent with diverse culinary roots, we live and breathe hospitality. So prime your appetite for some serious feasting between exploring cellar doors.

We’re talking flame-grilling over fire-pits, sophisticated food and wine pairings, long table lunches between vineyard rows, restaurant veggie patches ripe for picking, chef sessions to supercharge your home cooking, grazing local cheesemakers, chocolatiers and smokehouses, a sneaky glass of sparkling with breakfast, and being brought undone

by the impossibility of settling for just one dessert, from an eye-popping array of bespoke sweets.

Taste the flavour difference in the locally farmed produce our foodies are wild about sharing. We let the growing season shape our menus, so there’s always something fresh to feel enticed by.

Tempted to try your hand at cheesemaking? Get savvy with slow cooking? Perfect your paella? Expand your repertoire with a culinary class and a glass of iconic Hunter wine to take the whole experience up a notch. Your food-loving heart will fall hard for our Hunter Valley food community and culture.

HERE’S TO WORLD-CLASS CUISINE

The real joy of wine is found in good company enjoying great food together. The gifted chefs of the Hunter Valley are every bit as picky about what they present to you, as our skilled winemakers are. Locals love nothing more than to carve out an afternoon for a long lunch and lively conversation about the wines they’ve laboured all year to bottle, so don’t be surprised to find yourself rubbing shoulders with them at any one of our 30 plus eateries.

You’ll have your choice of 9 hatted restaurants, no end of intimate settings overlooking vines that the wine in your glass has been harvested from, wickedly good dessert bars, and relaxed pubs or cafés where you can kick back in country ambience without missing a beat on deliciousness.

The heart and soul of Hunter food culture is producedriven menus and passionate people who work tummy-rumbling magic with their pick of an abundant regional crop, much of it grown within a stone’s throw of where you’re devouring it. Our fanatical foodies believe the perfection of what they plate-up, hangs on out-of-this-world, locally farmed raw ingredients, so bursting with flavour that you can almost taste the sunshine. Chances are, the chef was up to his knees in mud and gumboots just before your arrival, foraging some finishing touches from the kitchen garden.

Park yourself by an open woodfire and you’ll quickly acclimatise to a food adventure with a share plate of artisan cheeses, from the dairy down the road, dripping with honeycomb that’s fragrant with the gum blossom of towering local eucalypts. Really savour the sweetness of local lamb and beef that melts so beautifully onto your fork, the crispness of veggies you never knew tasted so good, and a smokiness that sets your mouth watering as it wafts in with your sourdough.

It’s all part of the trophy-wine-worthy food experience that is, in essence, wonderfully simple, defiantly regional, and certain to leave you craving more.

HERE’S TO TANTALISING TASTEBUDS

Chasing down must-try tastings? Put our gourmet artisans into your GPS for food finds unique to the Hunter Valley that are every bit as true to regional character as our premium wines. Local farming families have for decades harvested ripe and delicious figs, citrus and avocadoes, still eagerly sought for the larders of our best chefs, and sold from the farmgate.

The olive groves of 30 boutique growers thrive in our Mediterranean-like climate. Immensely proud of their fragrant and fruity extra virgin oil, they’ll tempt you with salad-transforming flavour-infused varieties, barrel aged vinegars, tapenades and moreish marinated olives. Delectably creamy, small-dairy cheeses abound, and you can peek behind the scenes to see some of Australia’s most skilled soft cheese makers in action. For picnic-ready paté and house-cured charcuterie, head straight to the smokehouse.

Almost-too-pretty-to-eat pastries, luscious preserves, raw honey, crackly-crusted heirloom-starter sourdough, chocolate bark laced with native flavours and intricately hand painted bonbons are all part of the local gourmet landscape.