With sprawling grounds, quirky artworks and a secret garden, there’s plenty to meander at this boutique Hills winery.
Review by Carla Caruso
The Adelaide Hills is always a good choice when looking to head to a winery, no matter the season.
And one such winery that offers plenty for the kids to explore is Bird in Hand at Woodside.
I headed up there with my family-of-four and some friends one summery Saturday. The boutique winery was established by couple Andrew and Susie Nugent in 1997 on land that was previously a dairy farm.
The estate’s named after the Bird in Hand gold mine, which operated near the site in the 19th century.
Along with boasting award-winning drops, the winery has spectacular gardens, a cellar door, chook shed, and a farm-to-table restaurant.
After we’d secured an outdoor table on the winery’s leafy terrace, our group enjoyed some seasonal share plates and wine from the cellar door. The food included pea and mint arancini, pork and ricotta meatballs, a heirloom tomato salad with peach and buffalo feta, and cheese with honeycomb and crackers. In a word, yum!
Following this, it was time for exploring the sprawling, landscaped grounds. (Winery co-founder Susie is a garden designer.) Artworks are dotted around the gardens — and cellar door. Among the pieces is a fibreglass chimpanzee bust by Lisa Roet, a blue geometric mural by Lucas Grogan, and a cheeky light installation by Min Wong (referencing the infamous ‘tough titties’ comment made by Ma Sheela in a 60 Minutes interview.) You can check out more of the winery’s artworks here.
Through a hedge archway, you’ll also find a ‘secret’ garden – a massive veggie patch that was previously a car park and now services the winery’s LVN Restaurant.
Adding to the nature-loving vibe, sustainability is important to the brand. On its website, it says:
We feel that we should be making every effort to look after our clean, green Adelaide Hills and have recently eliminated all synthetic pesticides and fungicides from the estate vineyards and gardens.
We actively encourage biodiversity with the aim to bring back native grasses undervine and a healthy population of good insects.”
If you’d like to while a little longer on the grounds, you now can too. The winery offers ‘O’ Quarters — a luxury space, between the restaurant and kitchen garden, which sleeps up to six guests (though it’s for adults only).
While writing this article, the expression, ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’, sprang to mind. Of course, it means to be happy with what you have instead of going for something more.
And when it comes to exploring top wineries, why would you look any further than what’s on our doorstep?
Side-note: While in the Hills, we also headed to Balhannah’s Shaw + Smith (pictured below), which overlooks vines and a dam and is just 12 minutes’ drive from Bird in Hand. Another fab Hills option is Deviation Road at Longwood.
Location:
Bird in Hand Winery, 150 Pfeiffer Road, Woodside, South Australia
For more information and all enquiries, please visit the Bird in Hand website.
All photos by Carla Caruso and James Elsby for Play & Go Adelaide.
At Play & Go Adelaide we make every effort to provide accurate information to the best of our knowledge at the time of publication. We recommend confirming times, dates and details directly before making any plans as details may be subject to change.
As per all our Play & Go reviews, this is not a sponsored post and our review is done completely independently. All photos are by Play & Go (unless specified).
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