Every time the waiter at Brown Brothers Restaurant places a dish on our table, he uses the word “beautiful”.
“We incorporate our beautiful sourdough bread in the stock,” he says of the soup at the start of our leisurely long lunch. The charcuterie plate comes with “beautiful bresaola made from High Country beef”.
“Next is our beautiful sourdough pasta, another use of our beautiful sourdough bread. Also our beautiful Alpine cheese and breadcrumb.” And, lastly, “our beautiful venison marinated in a white wine vinegar with a little bit of rhubarb in the vinegar … (and) beautiful macadamia puree on the bottom.”
Seasonal ingredients
Our waiter’s enthusiasm, while perhaps a little too effusive, is certainly understandable, for every dish is skillfully and innovatively crafted from local seasonal ingredients, many of them harvested from the winery’s kitchen garden just hours before.
The set menu is the creation of executive chef Bodee Price, whose “beautiful” food earned the restaurant a hat in The Age Good Food Guide in 2023, 2024 and 2025. We experienced it matched with premium Brown Brothers wines as part of the winery’s Milawa Luxe Escape: Sip, Stay, Savor package, one of Australia’s Ultimate Winery Experiences.
This collection of experiences from award-winning wineries invites visitors to go “beyond the cellar door”, experiencing everything from tasting a 100-year-old Tawny at Seppeltsfield in South Australia’s Barossa Valley, to a helicopter transfer, overnight stay and dinner under the stars at the newest member, Western Australia’s Ampersand Estates.
Milawa Luxe Escape
The Milawa Luxe Escape: Sip, Stay, Savor package shines a spotlight on Victoria’s Milawa gourmet region, less than 3 hours’ drive from Melbourne, 4.5 hours from Canberra and 6.5 hours from Sydney.
A refined country escape for two, the package includes boutique accommodation at Church Lane, a beautiful (my description 😊) tiny home that is quite luxurious — and not as tiny as you might think. More about that later in this post and in our separate post specifically on Church Lane.
Brown Brothers’ cellar door and restaurant is 5 minutes’ drive or 20 minutes’ walk from Church Lane. We head there around noon, almost as soon as we’ve dropped off our bags and had a quick squiz at the accommodation.
“Beautiful” is indeed the word that immediately comes to mind as we arrive at Brown Brothers’ meticulously tended estate, its manicured lawns fed by a water tank and quintessential Southern Cross windmill, its garden beds a riot of fragrant roses in full bloom.
There’s just a handful of visitors on this quiet Monday morning. How lucky are we to have the place practically to ourselves, and luckier still, to enjoy a beautiful long lunch in a regional location on a Monday? Anyone who has toured in regional Australia knows this is something that should not be taken for granted.
Prosecco Lounge
We spot an inviting-looking Prosecco Lounge as we are guided to our table, and we earmark that as something to return to. The King Valley region of north-eastern Victoria pioneered the production of Prosecco in Australia, and Brown Brothers is on the King Valley Prosecco Road.
Innovation has long been the name of the game for this very special winery, which has a history dating back to 1889 and which – remarkably, given the industry’s globalization — is still owned by the Brown family after all these years.
I remember then CEO Ross Brown telling me 20 years ago that they were fielding numerous offers from potential buyers. “But I think they know now that this is a company that’s here for perpetuity,” he said at the time.
The legacy left by the original vigneron, John Francis Brown, who planted the first vines in 1885 and sold his first wine commercially in 1889, is apparent at every turn when visiting the estate.
A barn built by his father Harry in 1860 was substantially shored up in 2009 and continues to be used for functions and weddings. While none of the original vines remain, some of the Shiraz vines on the property are 95 years old and used in the estate’s Rosé.
First Families of Wine
Brown Brothers is one of 12 of Australia’s First Families of Wine, an association which recognizes the country’s oldest family-owned, multi-generational wineries. Despite – or perhaps because of – its history, it has always had an eye on the future, driving innovation in its Kindergarten Winery and responding to challenges like climate change by acquiring vineyards in cooler regions.
When I last met Ross Brown over 15 years ago, he spoke of the 20-year journey they had had with sparkling wine, perfecting their flagship Patricia bubbles and celebrating their NV winning Best Sparkling Wine at the National Wine Show. Their NV blend has gone on to become one of the most successful NV sparkling wines in the show.
It’s a treat then to be served a glass of the NV Premium Cuvée at the start of our meal as the waiter explains the restaurant’s farm-to-table approach and how the dishes are designed to be shared. Super refreshing on a hot day, the Cuvée has fine bubbles, a lovely soft creaminess, and zippy green apple and citrus notes. Cheers to this welcome drink!
We tear off pieces of house-made sourdough bread and dip them into black garlic salt and an oil that’s described as “garden waste”, which may not sound enticing but is a triumph of ingenuity and deliciousness. Leftover vegetable scraps and onion skins are infused in olive oil for eight months to achieve the oil’s unique umami flavour.
Leftover sourdough bread, especially the crust, is soaked in a broth before being strained to make a clear soup that we enjoy as an appetizer. There’s also a selection of charcuterie made in house, including Pork fennel garlic salami and, yes, that beautiful Bresaola.
Along with a smoked lactic curd for dipping in – itself a by-product of cheese made in-house – there are crudités from the kitchen garden, including radishes, Fat Bastard asparagus, and salty ice leaf.
New to us (although apparently under our noses all along), this remarkable leaf is so named because the underside looks like it’s frozen. Many Aussies think, incorrectly, that it is native, because it grows prolifically in many of our coastal areas. We love its zesty taste.
From the kitchen garden
Everything on this platter is sourced from the kitchen garden, which our waiter tells us is “going gangbusters”. Later we’ll take a walk and see the garden for ourselves.
Brown Brothers’ 2023 Estate Chardonnay is a lovely match for the next three dishes, octopus, pasta and venison. Made with King Valley fruit, it’s a stylish wine with honeydew melon flavours and subtle oak, a nice complement to the octopus which is slowly poached overnight and pan-seared at the finish.
The garnish for the octopus is so interesting: the almond on top is picked prematurely so it is still a little furry and fuzzy with a soft almond flavour coming through. With a touch of garlic and white wine vinegar, and a few drops of bay leaf curry oil (made in house of course), the dish is bursting with flavour and texture.
As we’ve come to expect, the pasta dish is “beautiful”, topped with pangrattato made from sourdough breadcrumbs, alpine cheese, crunchy asparagus and chive flowers. The venison is marinated in white wine vinegar infused with a little rhubarb, severed tartare without any gamey flavour at all.
The final main dish, a buttery pork scotch, is served with greens from the garden and Brown Brothers’ 2023 Wine Maker’s Series Tempranillo & Graciano, an aromatic, medium-bodied blend of oaked Graciano and unwooded Tempranillo.
Ross Brown, these days, is a keen gardener and so we see his name pop up in the dessert: Ross’s native lime + mousse + trifle + Geraldton wax. This is a great expression of the chef’s passion for incorporating native Australian ingredients, the Geraldton wax lending a flavour similar to the more widely known lemon myrtle.
The dessert is presented as a trifle, the bottom layer of custard infused with juice and zest from native lime that Ross grows in the kitchen garden. It’s topped with a layer of sponge cake made with almond, honey and burnt butter, and finally a layer of jelly made with Brown Brothers’ recently launched Yuzu & Lemon Prosecco Spritz. (The Spritz line-up looks a treat by the way – something to look out for when the temperature ramps up.)
The attention to detail in this lunch is extraordinary, and as soon as we’re done, we want to see the kitchen garden where the magic happens. Observing from outside the gate, we see that it is flourishing with goodness and abundance on this glorious sunny day.
Brown Brothers’ Wine & Food Adventure, another Ultimate Winery Experience, includes a tour of the garden with a chef foraging for ingredients, followed by a lunch crafted around the produce you’vehelped harvest. That experience includes a winery & history tour, and a premium guided wine tasting at the cellar door. I like the sound of all this and would love to see a merging of the two experiences.
Treasure trove of old wines
The Sip, Stay, Savor experience doesn’t include a tour and tasting, but for research purposes we’re shown the old cellars that are not generally open. It’s a surreal experience to stand where John Francis Brown made his first wines, and to see the second cellar he dug out as the business took off.
The second winery was built in 1905 and is still in use, now housing mainly fortifieds stored in wonderful big, old barrels. There’s even a framed receipt for its construction, showing that it cost a little over 6 pounds to build.
Finally, we descend into a cellar built in 1970, now the museum/family cellar and a veritable treasure trove of old wines, including a bottle of 1962 Noble Riesling, Australia’s first commercially released botrytis wine.
With the aroma of old wine in our nostrils, we wind our way back up to ground level and head to the restaurant to collect the takeaway platter of house-made cheeses, charcuterie and crostini that is included as part of our Sip, Stay, Savor experience.
We could have enjoyed it in the tub on the deck of our lovely Church Lane accommodation but we’re too tired even for that, so we relax on the comfy leather lounge and look out to a magnificent sunset. It’sa sight to behold and, coupled with the peace and tranquility, one of the highlights of this boutique accommodation.
Kicking back at Church Lane
The self-contained tiny home, one of two within minutes of Brown Brothers, is well-appointed with everything we need for a blissful stay. The Sip, Stay, Savor package costs $575 for two and includes one night’s accommodation, lunch with paired wines, and a cheese/charcuterie platter.
For an extra $150, you can hire an e-bike and explore the Milawa countryside, following the scenic rail trail to visit local farm gates, producers, and cellar doors at your own pace.
Brown Brothers has nine Ultimate Winery Experiences to choose from, including the Secret Life of a Winemaker which costs $80 for a behind-the-scenes winery tour and guided tasting.
Brown Brothers Milawa
244 Milawa-Bobinawarrah Road,
Milawa, Victoria
Australia
Tel: +61 (0)3 5720 5500
ultimatewineryexperiences.com.au
