Flexibility has been a feature of the Australian dining scene for some time now. In restaurant world, flexibility means providing ways to dine beyond the traditional three-course meal structure (sharing, snacking, solo), allowing customers to choose their own adventure. Passing Clouds, the winery and vineyard in Musk, ten minutes outside of Daylesford, is taking a similar approach to tastings at its cellar door.

Passing Clouds once offered traditional tastings in its cellar door and a three-course lunch in its dining room. Now the menu lists a series of small plates that can be gathered together for the full lunch experience but also allow the option of snacking. The kicker of this new approach though is that no matter your preferred eating style, the food can be paired with a guided, table-side wine tasting, a significant departure from the traditional ‘stand, sniff and sip’ cellar door experience.

“We wanted to bring the restaurant concept in line with the cellar door concept,” says Cameron Leith, whose father Graham co-established the winery in 1974. “It’s really been led by us talking to our customers, who were after a more casual experience, a more relaxed style of wine tasting.
You can still come here for a bottle of wine and a set-course lunch, but we now approach our customers with the question: what would you like to do?”

It's a smart approach for a long-standing winery with a wide variety of wine styles. Originally established in the Bendigo region, Passing Clouds made its name with warm climate shiraz and cabernet sauvignon, before moving to the Macedon Ranges where Graham Leith had begun planting pinot noir and chardonnay vines in 1998. Passing Clouds still make warm climate styles with fruit sourced from growers in the Bendigo region, but the label also turns heads with its elegant cool climate sparkling, pinot noir and chardonnay – and most recently pinot blanc – varieties for which the Macedon Ranges is increasingly renowned.

Cameron took over winemaking duties from his father in 2008 but has recently passed that baton to winemaker Tim Castle in order to focus his passion for regenerative farming. An approach to agriculture that’s been practiced at Passing Clouds for ten years, regenerative farming is, according to Cameron, about being “in harmony with nature, rather than working against it.

At the winery, this means attending to the relationships between soil microbes and the vines, fertilising only with compost they make on site and integrating livestock into the equation, in this case, a breed of short-stature sheep called Babydoll, which rotationally graze through the vineyard year-round.

“Regenerative farming has huge benefits like sequestering larger amounts of carbon in the soil but also in terms of wine quality and how it allows us to more fully expresses the site, the terroir,” Cameron says. “I feel fortunate that Tim’s been with us for several years now and his philosophies and approach really align with what we want to achieve in the winery.”

Those achievements can now be sampled alongside a menu that includes wine-friendly faves like charcuterie and pâté, locally sourced vegetables and meats cooked over the winery’s charcoal pit. Accompanied by tastings guided by well-informed staff, it’s easy to find yourself in perfect match territory. Flexibility indeed.

Passing Clouds Winery
Cameron Leith
Cellar Door open 7 days a week
Thursday - Monday 10am-5pm
Tuesday - Wednesday 10am - 2.30pm
Dining Room
Friday - Monday from 11am
passingclouds.com.au

CAMERON LEITH
PASSING CLOUDS WINERY

STORY BY MICHAEL HARDEN
PHOTOS BY KAIYA RAE