By Kay O'Sullivan
Dining in ... part of the new 85-seat restaurant at Giorgio Gjergja’s Port Phillip Estate; (inset) Giorgio Gjergja.
Giorgio Gjergja's early memories of the Mornington Peninsula revolve around the Portsea pier. Newly arrived in Australia from a refugee camp in Italy, he would flee Melbourne in the summer for Portsea to catch squid under the pier.
Today, more than 48 years later, Gjergja is the owner of two of the Mornington Peninsula's finest wineries, Kooyong and Port Phillip Estate. At the beginning of the month, he opened what is already being spoken of as the finest cellar door in Australia, Port Phillip Estate.
It is certainly one of the most expensive. Gjergja admits to a budget of $11 million but after a good deal of coaxing concedes that, yes, perhaps it did climb higher than that.
"Cellar door" is something of a misnomer for what stands at 263 Red Hill Road. It gives no sense of the scale and grandeur of what Wood/ Marsh Architecture has conjured.
The cellar door where you taste the 20 wines made by the chief winemaker for both the Kooyong and Port Phillip Estate labels, Sandro Mosele, is just a fraction of the new complex. It shares half of the space on the entrance level with an 85-seat restaurant, private dining room and a massive deck cantilevered towards the vineyard. Built into the ridge under the cellar door is a private tasting room, a cavernous barrel store, bottling area, wine museum and laboratory.
Below the restaurant are six apartments. All the spaces - with the exception of the museum, which houses both wineries' vintages - give multiplex-size views of undulating hills, lush vines, bushland and, shimmering in the distance, Westernport Bay, Phillip Island and Bass Strait. Three million people visit the peninsula annually. It was Melbourne's original playground; people have always gone there, as Gjergja can testify. But since the advent of wine tourism - a relatively recent phenomenon, with "Bails" Myer planting the first vines in 1972 - a lot of the trips are driven by the fruits of the vine.
And Gjergja sees plenty of room for expansion. "Where else can you get to a wine region within an hour? It's three hours to the Hunter; longer to Margaret River," Gjergja says over lunch at the restaurant days before it opens. "And it's much nicer," he says, indicating the sparkling scene before us.
Having lived part of the week at Sorrento for a decade, he is keenly aware of how the area has changed and sees strong support from locals. And he is excited by the prospect of a ferry from Cowes to Point Leo, explaining how it would make touring the state's wine regions a doddle. Family ties played a role in Gjergja's decision to veer into vino. His family had been involved in the industry in Italy.
"My grandfather and my uncle were producers of wine on the Dalmatian coast of Italy," he says. "They would make liqueur from those maraschino cherries.
"I remember harvest time at our compound; it was a bit like what happens with the beaujolais, where everyone sings and dances. I remember it as such fun."
Fun, yes, but sustained success in the wine industry requires skill and hard work. From the start, Gjergja applied the principles that saw his company become the world leader in lighting-control systems to the wine industry. "It is always about quality, whatever you do," he says. "Once you start compromising quality, you are finished." Which is why when he acquired Port Phillip Estate he contracted Mosele to make his wine. Mosele, according to The Age wine writer Jeni Port, has had a far-reaching influence on the style of wine that is being produced on the Mornington Peninsula.
"He is without doubt an extraordinary winemaker and in his time at Kooyong and Port Phillip Estate has helped consolidate the reputation of the Mornington Peninsula as aworld-class producer of chardonnay and pinot noir," Port says. The new Port Phillip Estate has a bewildering array of equipment to ensure the natural advantages of terroir and Mosele's skill aren't frittered away. "It's the 10 per centers that can make a big difference," Mosele says, grabbing a moment between staff training sessions.
In the case of Port Phillip Estate, the 10 per centers to which he refers include an innovative air-washing technique for bottles and the cavernous cellars, which - thanks toWood/Marsh Architecture's design and the use of rammed earth - do not require mechanical cooling.
By late next month, the six apartments will be ready for guests. Black dominates the apartments: the bathroom tiles are black, as is the leather bedhead. (Incidentally, guests will be able to see Westernport while reclining in bed. Early on, the owner had the builders construct a platform outside in the fields to show him this was possible.) But Gjergja is most concerned that I see the two-bedroom apartment, designed for disabled guests who need a carer.
"I was up in Sydney for the Sydney to Hobart [Gjergja won the ocean yacht race in 1996] with a friend of mine whose daughter is disabled. We went to a restaurant and the poor girl needed to go to the toilet and she could not get through as they were using it as storage. I was so angry, " he says, still bristling at the memory of the injustice of the situation. The restaurateurs heard about it and so did the relevant authorities.
The tale also explains why there are two elevators at Port Phillip Estate - one giving access to the accommodation and the other to the cellars, museum and such. "Why should people who need help miss out?" Gjergja says.
The tour of duty over, there is one question that remains: Does this all have to make money?
"Yes, of course," the businessman says.
When?
"Eventually," the man of passion says.
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