Cottage Blog, The Mornington Peninsula Cottages in Rye, Victoria

Movie Night at the Trofeo Estate Winery

The standard of hospitality has been improved each day with the increasing popularity of wine tourism in the Mornington Peninsula. The bar is being raised, no, smashed from time to time. New investments, new ideas and offerings are brought to the market each day. Drinkers and diners continue to be spoiled. There is now much more than a good meal and a perfect matching wine over the peninsula wineries. Live music, Aussie smoked BBQ? Nice but kind of a given these days. How about a sculpture park? If the owner is a real estate tycoon and an art collector, why not. But you can also implement new ideas without having to invest millions.

Fine dining at the 1930s building of The Trofeo Estate Winery

Trofeo Estate has been offering an unique wine & dine experience. We have been visiting their cellar door and restaurant regularly for more than 3 years. We saw their wine and hospitality standard increasing, the food and the dining hall at their 1930s building are always superb. Spending time there is like visiting an old friend at her tasteful heritage home, spoiled with good food and wine of course, in a casual atmosphere, chatting and having some laughs. After dinner, your friend plays a movie and everybody watches it over a few good glasses of wine.

Cine, Wine & Dine at the Trofeo Estate Winery

Yes you saw it right, Trofeo Estate runs movie nights like your friend’s place. You join them for an a la carte dinner, then enjoy a movie and dessert on the house. Dinner service starts at 6pm, movie starts 8.30pm.

With the long summer days, this is quite perfect. We spent the day at the beach, arrived at the estate in the late afternoon, enjoy fresh air and a glass of bubbles over their deck, followed by dinner and a movie night. I swear that I had worst days …

The Rose, Chardonnay and a lesser known and tried Cabernet Sauvignon are my favourites

An old basket press at their cellar door.

Many of the Trofeo Estate wine are aged in their Terracotta Amphorae.

Claire at the Trofeo Estate cellar door, very nice person and very knowledgeable.

Fresh Mussels and Ocean 8 Pinot Gris 2017

If you have been following blogs from The Cottage Chef, you must be aware that she like simple recipes using the freshest ingredients. This is true for both at home and at her cottages. She also like to promote local produces from the Mornington Peninsula.

Ocean 8 Pinot Gris 2017 pairs with mussels, freshly harvested by The Peninsula Fresh Seafood.

Lately The Cottage Chef visited the seafood truck again, and this time she got some mussels that were just harvested. With mussels literally just pulled out from the sea, they should be enjoyed in the simplest way possible.

Some readers may think of just boiling them, not bad actually. Although The Cottage Chef doesn’t believe boiling = boring, but a small dose of magic to enhance its favour won’t hurt. It happened that the nearby Ocean 8 winery had recently released their 2017 Pinot Gris, which will make an interesting pairing. The Cottage Chef has been a long time fan of Ocean 8. We will write another post on Ocean 8 later, it is one of the smaller wineries of Mornington Peninsula making great Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and Pinot. Ocean 8 should never be missed by wine lovers.

Back to the dish, The Cottage Chef bought 1.5kg of mussels, cleaned. In a large sauce pan, put in a few garlic cloves chopped, 2 tablespoon of butter, put in the mussels and stir a few times. Pour in a cup of Ocean 8 Pinot Gris, cover and bring it to boil. Turn down the heat after it boils, put in a small grab of parsley finely chopped, stir and cover again, let it simmer for 3 minutes.

Last but not least, enjoy the rest of Pinot Gris with the mussels.

P.S: A touch of chilli will be fantastic, the Ocean 8 Pinot Gris loves it actually.

The Making of MP Cottages Part #1

If you’ve been following our blogs, you’d know that we are trying to bring our Humble Beach Shack back to glory. We had researched in depth before we came up with our design and a plan for its execution. In this blog post we tell the stories behind our decor.

When we were property hunting in the peninsula for this holiday accommodation project, we saw many run down houses. Many of them were vacated by their retiree occupants before they headed to the nursery homes. Entering these houses is like stepping back in time. For many of the retirees, their children had left home for years. They lived in the same house with their partners until they were the last one to go. We saw rooms that hadn’t changed a bit since their children departed in the 80s, or even 70s. The beds are always neatly made, sometimes a bit dusty, frozen in time. The pictures on the walls tell their family stories.

These experiences added to our determinations to maintain the neighbourhood characteristics, and their stories. It is unfortunate that the property we have doesn’t come with its original decor nor furnitures. We therefore had to source them piece by piece. Ebay, Gumtree are often good sources; and of course the local antique shop. Sadly we cannot afford most antiques in the shop. We also don’t like the cheap remakes from Asia neither. Luckily we found some good offerings online, with lots of driving to many corners in Melbourne, we got a few good pieces. They were as humble as our old beach shack, all needing our tender love and care.

Here are a few pictures of us cleaning, polishing and preparing these items for display in our cottages. Enjoy.

The Dolphin Cottage

Vermentino and Crittenden Estate Winery

If you are a wine expert or a long time Italian wine drinker, please look away. Most wine drinkers won’t describe a wine as “versatile”. However, with hot asian spices, you do need something interesting to go with. Unless, you go with a beer or tea, they always work and work well.

There are 2 schools of thoughts on pairing with very spicy dishes; some would match with an off dry to “relieve” the spiciness, others would match with a high alcohol, high tannin red for a “head on collision”.

I have a different objective. It’s not arm wrestling here. I ain’t looking a wine with favours to co-exists with, nor compete with the spice. I am hoping for something that can add to and enhance the spiciness.

At Crittenden Estate, I found the best match today. Crittenden Estate first planted in 1982. They are also pioneers of wine tourism in Mornington Peninsula, which inspires us MP Cottages to start our holiday accommodation business today. Besides making wine, Crittenden runs a restaurant and accommodation onsite. We dined and stayed at the Crittenden Estate, had a great time. We’d recommend quality competitors, they are one of them.

View from the Crittenden Estate Lakeside Villa, after a heavy rain.

Sunset at the Lakeside Villa patio

Enjoying a sparkling at the Lakeside Villa

Back to their wine, Crittenden Estate makes a Vermentino. Let’s begin with our proper wine notes after tasting:

“The Crittenden Estate Pinocchio Vermentino offers lively aromas of pear, white peach, and pink grapefruit with subtle notes of citrus zest. It is a refreshing medium body that could enjoy on its own as aperitif, perfect for MP summer. On the palate, it’s medium acidity and slightly on the riper side with flavors of grapefruit fresh almond. Perfect match with garlic prawns, grilled octopus, goat cheese or even fennel-spiced pork sausages.”

And we put it to a real test ….

What’s harder than pairing a wine with a Sichuan spicy tapa? Try 4. In the featured image you will see the “4 small plates” in our test. They were made with fennel, pepper, aniseed, cinnamon, clove, chili pepper, broad bean chili paste, shallots, ginger, and garlic. Enough? They aren’t dishes made so spicy which numb your lips and tongue, but trust me they have enough. The Vermentino dance in my mouth, I could taste both the wine, the spice and the freshness of the ingredients. It was like magic. I went back and forth around the four dishes and the wine, each time it gave me something new, delicious, savoury and very enjoyable.

I would love to have more. At the time of writing, the Vermentino is no longer on Crittenden’s website. Dear Crittenden (Rollo, Zoe, Garry), if you see this, I hope you haven’t pulled the vines and please continue making it.

Arthurs Seat Climb

It was a cold spring morning in Rye. I woke up in the dark asking myself, “are you sure?” Despite I had readied my cycling gears, getting out of bed for a ride was never easy. The Mornington Peninsula has been a cycling friendly region, cyclists are welcomed and tolerated (yes imagine you are driving behind a big bunch riding at 30km/hr along Point Nepean Road) to ride at anytime of the day. I wanted to start early as I always enjoy riding in the morning, free from the traffic.

I walk quietly towards the living room, with fear of waking up my kids, put on my gear in the dark, turn on the bike light and off I went. I rode along the relatively flat Point Nepean Road with a tail wind on my back, towards Sorrento. You’ll have difficulty finding a better stretch of road for a warm up ride, cars free in the morning, with the sun slowly emerging from the horizon. It was sunrise when I made it to Sorrento. I had a little stop near the Searoad Ferry pier before I turned around for the major objective of the ride, The Arthurs Seat climb.

Brief stop near the Searoad Ferry pier in Sorrento.

For the fit cyclists, the Arthurs Seat climb is steep but short. One climb is never enough and many of them do loops as part of their training. It is a very popular climb for obvious reasons. The climb itself is very well documented, therefore I won’t repeat here.

It is however not just another scenic cycling challenge, but also a monument in Australia road bike racing. For many years the Arthurs Seat climb had been featured as a stage in the Herald Sun Tour. World class cyclists like Simon Clarke, Stuart O’Grady, Bradley Wiggins, Simon Gerrans and recently the Tour de France winner, Christ Froome, had all been sweating along this climb. During a race day, cycling fans and spectators would be gathering at one of the many hairpin turns along the climb, cheering for their favourites.

I took my time riding towards Dromana before I started the climb. I still needed my legs playing with my children in the afternoon, so climbing once was enough.

IMG_5052 (1).jpg — Stopping at one of the lookouts along the climb, with Port Phillip Bay in the background.

At the top I was rewarded with a good view, and of course the descend. If you know what you are doing, descending the Arthurs Seat is a joy. On a dry day in good conditions, there are many hairpin turns to test your skills.

I ended the ride with an easy stroll back to the cottage, time for coffee and of course a dip in the hot tub.