Tuesday 31 May 2011

Lindenwarrah at Milawa and Merlot Restaurant

A few weeks ago work took me to North East Victoria for a two day trip with colleagues. Apart from working we stayed overnight at Lindenwarrah at Milawa thanks to a dearth of available hotel rooms in Wangaratta. Lindenwarrah is set amongst the vines across from the Brown Brothers winery in the Milawa gourmet region near Wangaratta in the picturesque King Valley (one of my favourite wine regions to tour).

This was my second visit to Lindenwarrah at Milawa, which is one of the Lancemore Group of hotels. On my first visit I stayed in one of the ground floor vineyard rooms looking out towards Mount Buffalo, while on this visit I was in a first floor room looking over the vineyards at Brown Brothers (which we didn’t manage to visit due to work commitments). The room was spacious and simply elegant, with a plush king sized bed and well appointed bathroom with Molton Brown toiletries. 


Rather than drive into Wangaratta to dine at Rinaldo’s Casa Cucina (Adam Pizzini’s restaurant), we ate at Lindenwarrah’s Merlot Restaurant. Merlot’s wine list features several wines from the different Lancemore properties vineyards as well as plenty of local wines. We started with a bottle of 2010 Dal Zotto Pinot Grigio to accompany the freshly baked crusty bread rolls (still hot from the oven) served with a delicious nutty dukkah and good olive oil. 

As we weren’t overly hungry we skipped entrees and went straight for mains, although I must note that on my previous visit I enjoyed a lovely crumbed zucchini flower stuffed with Milawa chèvre ($18) as an entrée.
Two of us ordered the lamb medallions ($30), while the other ordered the eye fillet of beef ($36). There were two medallions of lamb encrusted with a savoury mixture of panko crumbs and Milawa rosemary mustard. The two medallions of lamb (a little less pink than I prefer) was served on a bed of sweet potato puree and sautéed broccolini and finished with a pan jus. The rich, sticky, lamb jus tied the other elements of the dish together well, resulting in an enjoyable meal.  


My dining companion said that his steak, which was served with baked leek and potato and a poivrade sauce, was perfectly cooked.



We finished our meal with a surprisingly yummy scoop of Lindenwarrah Shiraz ice cream.


1 comment:

  1. Food looks yummy! Sounds like you had a great trip.

    ReplyDelete