This was published 12 years ago
Villa Gusto, Buckland review: A perfect slice of Italy
Colin McLaren.Credit: Craig Sillitoe
Retired cop Colin McLaren built his own villa and restaurant following an inspiring trip to Lake Como, writes Liz Porter.
Colin McLaren looks out the tall curved windows of the dining room of his Villa Gusto gourmet retreat in Bright. The former task force detective only allows himself a minute to drink in the dramatic views of Mount Buffalo before returning his attention to the vases on the dining room tables.
Each is full of roses that, like the herbs, limes and vegetables used in the kitchen, have been picked from the villa's 8000 square metres of manicured gardens. Checking the blooms, he moves every vase out of the direct sunlight and heads for the door.
There are eight luxury suites' worth of bedding to be collected, one exterior wall to be painted, machinery to be repaired, heavy plant pots to be moved, eggs to be collected from the hen house, food orders to be checked and room reservations to be taken - along with bookings for the establishment's restaurant, in extra demand since it won a "hat" in last year's Age Good Food Guide.
McLaren is best known as a crime writer. In 2009, he wrote Infiltration, which documents his undercover life with the Mafia in Griffith. He followed up with a detective novel, On the Run, and Sunflower, the story of his grandfather's life as a soldier in World War I.
Readers would also lap up the Villa Gusto story. But its main character has been too busy to put it on paper. "Anyway," he laughs. "I don't know where it ends."
The Villa Gusto story began in 2000, when McLaren woke early on the first morning of a holiday in a villa on the shores of Lake Como. Throwing open the shutters of his room, he stared out at the sparkling expanse of water and across to the pastel-pretty houses of Bellagio. Italy had been his favourite place in the world since he was a teenager and the word "Italian" meant the Sicilian family warmth and stuffed zucchini flowers served up by the mother of his best friend, Vinnie Messina.
At some point, he recalls, he looked away from the water and down to the grounds of the villa itself. He found himself studying the ordered lines of Tuscan pines, the orange and lemon trees, the profusion of frangipani. Resting his hands on the cold marbled top of the old four-drawer credenza, he had felt the old wooden parquetry floor cooling his bare feet. "It was then," he says, "that I knew I wanted to build my own Italian villa. But in Australia." One with an equally impressive view, he vowed. And with a restaurant attached.
An idea like this would have been ambitious enough for a bloke whose family had business interests in food, wine or architecture. But coming from a former cop, it seemed little short of absurd. Retired police officers are well represented in the hospitality area - in country pubs with giant counter lunches.
McLaren's daughter is a trained chef but his only building experience was as a handyman home renovator. In fact, his best qualification for a career in gourmet travel was the fact he was a dedicated Italophile.
He had travelled in Italy before joining the Victorian police service. Over the next 20 years, he made another dozen trips, exploring every region. Then, from 1993 he spent two years undercover with the 'Ndrangheta, a branch of the Calabrian Mafia based in the NSW town of Griffith, posing as a shifty Melbourne art dealer who sold cocaine on the side. The local godfather and his deputy welcomed the Melburnian into their family. This mistake earned them long jail sentences. But it added greatly to the detective's knowledge of Calabrian home cooking.
By 2001, McLaren was scouring Victoria for some land with a view beautiful enough to charm the occupants of his dream villa. Unable to find a Como-esque lake, he opted for the Calabrian-style hill views offered by a site in north-western Victoria's Buckland Valley, just outside Bright.
The 8000-square-metre site was "bald" but in his imagination he was already planting it with cypress hedgerows.
By 2002, he had dug in hundreds of trees and he was ready to build. Rejecting the idea of a "faux" historic Italianate villa, he designed a modern take on the idea. Built out of the local stone, with a rough-trowelled render of ochre-coloured limewash, his villa has a vast horseshoe-shaped dining room, its curved windows like the lens of an eye looking west and up to the mountains.
That year he made several buying trips to Italy, ordering marble for bathrooms and benches, collecting tapestries, tiles and lampshades, along with small treasures such as a brick from the 12th-century castle of the Duke of Asti in Piedmont, discarded during restoration work and now at home in his dining room's giant fireplace. His establishment opened its doors in mid-2003 and gourmet travellers, proclaiming it "Tuscany in the Buckland Valley", flooded in.
Four years ago, McLaren "ran away" to become a writer, leaving Villa Gusto in the hands of managers. Bookings remained solid but absentee ownership didn't suit him. He's now moved back to manage his "baby" himself, cooking breakfasts and doing "front of house" in the evenings, serving up dishes from chef Emma Handley's southern Italian menus. It's been the hardest work of his life.
"Until now, I'd always said that infiltrating the Mafia was the toughest thing I've ever done," he says.
"But these days, everyone's a critic. So just getting food on the plate and keeping all the guests happy is much more demanding."
Villa Gusto, 630 Buckland Valley Road, just outside Bright. It has eight suites and a one-hat restaurant, open Wednesday to Saturday, with chef Emma Handley's five-course set menu $75 a person. Accommodation ranges from $275 a night midweek and $295 a weekend night for the deluxe suites to $225 a night midweek and $250 a weekend night for a standard villa room. Two-night minimum stay. Phone 5756 2000, see villagusto.com.au.
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