VICTORIA’S King Valley is a favourite with the tourists.
Melbourne holiday makers dash up the Hume Highway to Milawa and Oxley when they can string a couple of vacation days together to eat, drink and be merry in the land of wine and cheese.
But I have discovered there’s another King Valley hamlet that deserves a moment of consideration when planning a King Valley escape.
Whitfield, which is a 30-minute drive from the start of the Snow Road at Oxley, is a village with just a couple of hundred residents but a handful of vineyards and a lot of good wine.
Back in the old days the settlement was known as White Fields, with inspiration for the name coming from the tiny flowers that grew in the farmer’s paddocks, but somewhere in history a lazy bugger dropped a letter and merged the two words to come up with the modern title.
Tobacco was traditionally the money-making crop in this picturesque part of Victoria but, when the government started reducing quotas, the Italian migrants that settled in this region in the 20th century had to find another way to make a buck.
The first and second-generation Australians looked to their Italian heritage and started growing grapes in the region that boasts a swag of favourable micro-climates in this one long valley.
First they planted chardonnay, riesling, cabernet and merlot but, as they became more established and their vinos attracted attention from wine lovers around Australia, they began nurturing the Italian varieties their parents and grandparents grew in the Old Country.
While sangiovese, barbera and pinot grigio are doing well, the King Valley is now considered to be prosecco country.
This white variety, which makes a delicious sparkling that’s fermented in tanks rather than the bottle like the more traditional champagne, is grown in the elevated vineyards that are surrounded by the eucalypts that have sprouted since the last bushfire blazed through in 2007.
Prosecco originally hails from a small region in northern Italy, in the foothills of the Dolomites not far from the island city of Venice, and the locals say it’s the sparking for everyday drinking while champagne is only for special occasions.
One of the reasons Whitfield is a nice place to visit is because everyone knows everyone – or should I say, everyone is related to everyone – and the locals are so friendly that visitors are made to feel very welcome.
During our visit we had lunch with several members of the Dal Zotto family and, for just a few hours, I felt like I was a member of a huge Italian family doing lots of eating, drinking, talking and laughing.
And, if you want to sample a drop of prosecco, this is the place to do it.
Dal Zotto was the first winery in Australia to plant the prosecco grapes, and make a sparkling wine from the sweet juice that comes with a good season, with the family’s patriarch drawing on his childhood experiences to make two delightful varieties.
Otto Dal Zotto was born and raised in the Italian village of Valdobbiadene, the ancestral home of prosecco, where his relatives made enough of the “fun sparkling” every season to fill their own cellars from the grapes that grew on the steep hills outside town.
``There was no flat land in Valdobbiadene, all the grapes were up in the hills and it was very hard to get tractors up there so everything was done by hand,’’ Otto explains.
``Prosecco dates back to the Roman Empire, the Italians have been perfecting it over the years, and we put our first vines in the ground in 1999.
``I came to Australia in 1968 and growing prosecco was a way for me to connect with the old world while in my new world.’’
Today Otto looks after the vines and his son Michael is carrying on the family tradition of making Dal Zotto wine.
