What Is The Best Winery In Victoria?

What Is The Best Winery In Victoria?

No single body crowns Victoria's best winery, so the honest answer depends on which award you weight. In the 2027 Halliday Wine Companion, Winery of the Year went to House of Arras in Tasmania and Best Value Winery to the Yarra Valley's Medhurst, while Mount Mary Triolet 2024 took Wine of the Year. The Real Review separately named Yarra Yering its Winery of the Year Australia for 2026.

That is a deliberately unsatisfying opening, and it is the truthful one. Search results will hand you a confident top-ten list within seconds, usually built from review scores on booking sites or from a writer's palate. Neither is an award. What Victoria actually has is a small number of judged competitions with named results, published dates and scoreable fields, and those results disagree with each other in a healthy, interesting way.

The question also hides a geography problem. Victoria contains more than one famous wine region: the Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula, Heathcote, Rutherglen, the Grampians and Pyrenees among them. A "best winery in Victoria" list that only samples one region is not answering the question, it is answering a different one. This site covers the Yarra Valley, so the pages here lean toward that region's results, but the awards below are statewide and national, and the winners named come from wherever the judges put them.

If your real goal is to visit excellent wineries rather than adjudicate a title, the practical route is a driven day from Melbourne. The three options below cover the main formats: a relaxed half-day, a small-group afternoon with a wildlife finish, and a fully private day built around your own choices.

What Do The Halliday Wine Companion Awards Actually Measure?

The Halliday Wine Companion is Australia's most-cited wine guide, and its annual awards assess the wines in the book, not the cellar door experience. In the 2027 edition the tasting team assessed more than 7,000 wines, and the top winery title went to House of Arras in Tasmania, not to any Victorian producer.

That last point matters more than it first appears. For two consecutive editions, no Yarra Valley winery has taken Halliday Winery of the Year: the 2026 title went to Brokenwood in the Hunter Valley and the 2027 title to House of Arras. What the Yarra Valley did win in 2027 is arguably more useful to a visitor: Medhurst was named Best Value Winery, and Mount Mary's Triolet 2024 took Wine of the Year, White Wine of the Year and Other Whites and Blends of the Year in a single sweep.

The 2026 edition tells the same story from a different angle. Mount Mary Pinot Noir 2023 was named Pinot Noir of the Year at 98 points, and Yarra Yering Dry Red Wine No. 1 2023 took Cabernet and Blends of the Year at 99 points, while Winery of the Year again went elsewhere, to Brokenwood in the Hunter Valley. So a region can hold the best wine in multiple categories in the same book and still not hold the best winery. The guide's own structure explains why: Winery of the Year weighs a producer's whole entry across vintages, while the wine-of-the-year trophies reward single bottlings at their peak.

For a visitor, the takeaway is simple. If you want to taste a wine that a national panel judged the best in the country this year, the Yarra Valley currently holds several of those trophies. If you want a guarantee of a great cellar door afternoon, awards only get you part of the way there.

Which Yarra Valley Wineries Hold Current Awards?

Medhurst holds Best Value Winery 2027, Mount Mary holds Wine of the Year 2027 for Triolet 2024, Yarra Yering holds The Real Review's Winery of the Year Australia 2026, and Oakridge took five trophies including Wine of Show at the 2025 Yarra Valley Wine Show. Giant Steps' Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir 2024 won the 2025 Australian Pinot Noir Challenge.

That is a lot of silverware for one region, and each piece answers a slightly different question. The Real Review, a separate ranking body to Halliday, named Yarra Yering its Winery of the Year Australia for 2026, the producer's third such title after 2024 and 2021. If your version of "best" means the most consistently highly rated producer across a whole portfolio, Yarra Yering currently has the strongest claim in the state.

The regional show adds a fourth lens. At the 2025 Yarra Valley Wine Show, Oakridge Wines won five trophies including The James Halliday Wine of Show for its 2023 864 Funder and Diamond Drive Block Chardonnay, while Dominique Portet took Best Red Wine in Show, The Wanderer Wines took Best Pinot Noir, and De Bortoli's A5 Chardonnay won the Wine of Provenance trophy across three vintages. A regional show is judged blind against the region's own entries, so it tells you who is winning inside this valley right now, which is often the more practical question for a day trip.

Here is the current award record in one place, with the judging body and the year named for each result:

Giant Steps belongs on the list for a specific reason: its 2024 Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir won the trophy at the 2025 Australian Pinot Noir Challenge, the first time the Yarra Valley has taken it, breaking a five-year Tasmanian run against a field of more than 300 entries from 17 regions. Pinot noir is the Yarra Valley's largest variety by a wide margin, so a national pinot trophy is close to a regional championship.

Can You Visit The Award Winners In One Day?

Most of the wineries named above sit within an hour's drive of Melbourne, and several appear as confirmed stops on existing tours, so yes, a well-chosen single day can reach them. Yering Station, De Bortoli and TarraWarra are all confirmed stops on current listings, and Medhurst is a confirmed stop on a ten-hour small-group day.

Distances help here. Coldstream, the heart of the valley's cellar door cluster, is about 51 km by road from Flinders Street Station, and Healesville about 67 km, at free-flow speeds. That compactness is why a driven day tour works so well in this region: four stops is normal, five is achievable, and the driving between them is measured in minutes rather than hours. The catch is the drink-driving law, and it is the reason the driven tour exists at all. Victoria's general limit is 0.05, the offence is committed at 0.05 or more, and a first infringement at 0.05 to under 0.07 for a fully licensed driver aged 26 or over still means three months off the road. Self-driving an award-winery crawl is legal only with a genuinely disciplined designated driver.

The tours solve that problem and add a second one you may not have considered: access. Some of the most awarded producers are small, and a tour operator who visits regularly knows what a walk-in group of twenty can absorb and what it cannot. The Chandon, Soumah and De Bortoli small-group day, for instance, confirms lunch at the Heritage Golf and Country Club alongside three named producers, which is a very different day from a self-drive where you are negotiating each stop yourself.

For visitors who want the award winners without the full-day commitment, the small-group options are the sweet spot. The Chandon and sunset kangaroo safari day runs about seven hours in a small group from $140.71, rated 4.9 across 353 reviews, with confirmed stops at Domaine Chandon, Yering Station and the Yarra Valley Chocolaterie and Ice Creamery. You can Check availability on the live listing if that format suits, or read more in our guide to small-group Yarra Valley tasting days.

Is There A Single Official Ranking Of Victorian Wineries?

No. Victoria has no government or statutory ranking of wineries, and no industry body publishes one. What exists are three independent judging systems, the Halliday Wine Companion, The Real Review and the regional wine shows, each with its own criteria, and they regularly disagree about the top spot.

This is worth stating plainly because the internet is full of pages that imply otherwise. A "top 10 wineries in Victoria" listicle is one writer's opinion, sometimes one influenced by which venues host tours that pay a commission. The judged awards are different in kind: they name the body, the year, the field size and often a score out of 100, which means you can check the result and disagree with it on the same evidence the judges used.

The disagreement itself is informative. Yarra Yering is The Real Review's Australian winery of the year for 2026, yet in the Halliday universe the same year's headlines went to Mount Mary's pinot and Yarra Yering's own Dry Red No. 1 as category winners while the top winery title left the state entirely. Neither body is wrong; they are measuring different things. Halliday's winery award rewards breadth and consistency across a portfolio, The Real Review's methodology aggregates its own review scores over time, and a regional show judges a single season's entries blind.

So the practical method for a visitor is to pick the award that matches the question you are actually asking. Best value wine to take home: Medhurst has the current national title. Best single bottle to taste at a cellar door: Mount Mary's Triolet 2024 holds the 2027 trophy. Most consistent producer across a range: Yarra Yering holds the 2026 Real Review title. Best chardonnay within the valley this season: the 2025 regional show gave that to Oakridge. Our longer treatment of the statewide question, including how Tasmania and the Hunter Valley fit into it, sits in the companion piece on Australia's best winery overall.

How Should A First-Time Visitor Actually Plan The Visit?

Pick two or three award names you want to taste, then choose a tour format that reaches them rather than building a day around a single must-see. A half-day loop covers three cellar doors in five hours, a full day adds lunch and a fourth stop, and a private day lets you name the wineries yourself.

The mistake first-timers make is treating the winery as the destination and the transport as an afterthought. In this region the reverse works better: decide how many hours you have and whether lunch matters, then let the format determine which award winners you reach. A five-hour half-day from central Melbourne, the relaxed option this site features, runs from $85.87 and is rated 4.8 across 37 reviews, with hotel pickup and lunch available as an option. It will not reach five cellar doors, and it is not trying to.

At the other end, a private day built around your own choices, from $642.58 for the vehicle, is the only format where you can literally name Mount Mary or Yarra Yering and structure the day around them, subject to what each producer can accommodate on the day. Between those poles sit the standard full-day tours, most starting between $84.45 and $140.71 per person on the current roster, several of which include lunch and all of which list their confirmed stops on the live listing. For a wider view of the region's cellar doors before you choose, our guide to the Yarra Valley's wineries sets out the landscape, and Yarra Valley Wine Tours covers the tour formats in detail.

Whatever you book, read the stop list on the operator's listing rather than trusting an old blog post. The valley's cellar door landscape changed materially through 2025: Innocent Bystander closed its Healesville cellar door in March, Oakridge closed its fine-dining restaurant in June, while Storm Ridge Estate opened at Coldstream and Punt Road opened a purpose-built cellar door in October. Award lists age slowly; stop lists age fast.

If the half-day format sounds right for your first visit, the relaxed five-hour tour is the one to compare first.

For a full day, or for a group that wants to name its own award winners, these three formats cover the range.

Common Questions

What Is The Best Winery In Victoria?

There is no single official answer. In the 2027 Halliday Wine Companion, Victoria's strongest results are Medhurst as Best Value Winery and Mount Mary Triolet 2024 as Wine of the Year, while Winery of the Year went to House of Arras in Tasmania. The Real Review separately named Victoria's Yarra Yering its Winery of the Year Australia for 2026.

Has a Yarra Valley winery ever been named Halliday Winery of the Year?

Not in either of the last two editions. The 2026 title went to Brokenwood in the Hunter Valley and the 2027 title to House of Arras in Tasmania. Yarra Valley producers did win category trophies in both editions, including Pinot Noir of the Year 2026 for Mount Mary and three 2027 trophies for Mount Mary Triolet 2024.

Which Victorian wine currently holds the biggest national trophy?

Mount Mary Triolet 2024 holds Wine of the Year, White Wine of the Year and Other Whites and Blends of the Year in the 2027 Halliday Wine Companion Awards, assessed from a field of more than 7,000 wines.

Is the best winery in Victoria in the Yarra Valley?

Depends on the measure. The Yarra Valley holds the current national Best Value Winery (Medhurst), the current Wine of the Year (Mount Mary) and The Real Review's 2026 Winery of the Year Australia (Yarra Yering), but no Yarra Valley producer holds the Halliday Winery of the Year title in the last two editions.

Can I visit the award-winning wineries without driving?

Yes. Several tours from Melbourne list award-region producers as confirmed stops, including Yering Station, De Bortoli and Domaine Chandon, with hotel pickup and free cancellation. Victoria's 0.05 limit and automatic three-month disqualification for a first low-range infringement make a driven tour the sensible choice for a tasting day.