It’s an intensely exciting time of year at out Alpine Valley wineries. Grape pickers work the vines night and day to ensure the entire crop is harvested at precisely the right moment—the sugars, acidity and flavours must be just right. Timing is of the essence as the grapes are inspected, sorted, cleaned, crushed and fermented. It’s a fine art, and we’ve heard on the grape vine that Vintage 2026 is on track to be another good year for our Alpine Valleys winemakers! The grapes have matured well over the warm, dry summer, and our winemakers are excited about the wines to come. That’s a point worth remembering as not all wine regions fared well this past summer.
Marion Carrabin at North East Wine in Bright—a boutique wine bar and bottle shop that stocks our region’s best wines—says there has been some great vintages in recent years and the public is catching on to what vignerons have known for years: that the Alpine Valleys Wine Region produces exceptionally good wines.
“What makes it exceptional is that they’re small boutique winemakers,” says Marion. “It means there’s less preservatives, there’s less intervention in those wines. And because they do small boutique quantities, they can have a diversity that you might not be able to find in big companies.”
Diversity is perhaps the most delightful aspect of the Alpine Valleys Wine Region, with gorgeous grape varieties like Friulano, Pinotage, Tempranillo, Barbera and Grüner Veltliner flourishing in our cool climate. Our climate also brings a more diverse taste to old favourites, like Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. And our Nebbiolo is among the country’s best!
“We get these really beautiful mineral-driven, light, crisp wines that are really, really good,” says Marion.
Bright & Surrounds has some fabulous cellar doors, including Billy Button in Bright, Ringer Reef in Porepunkah, and Michelini Wines, Gapsted Estate, and Bush Track in Myrtleford. Some cellar doors, like Feathertop, are by appointment only. However, many of our acclaimed wineries, like Mayford Wines, are so boutique that running a cellar door isn’t feasible. For these gems, our wine bars are the critical source.
North East Wine is one of three wine bars in Bright & Surrounds, including Quaff Wine Bar in Mount Beauty, and Reclaim Wine bar in Myrtleford. The bar, which Marion runs with her partner Julian Faelli, prides itself in stocking our region’s best wines and rotates its wine list each week to accommodate. Its experience-driven focus saw North East Wine win Silver in the ‘New Tourism Business’ category at the 2025 Victorian Tourism Awards.
We asked Marion to name some of the Alpine Valleys’ must-try wines, all of which are available at North East Wine. Here’s what she recommends (in no particular order):
- Mayford, Tempranillo, 2024: An exceptional medium-bodied red wine from a five-star winery. (95+ points, Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front)
- Billy Button, Friulano, 2023: A white wine grape from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region in northern Italy close to Austria and Slovenia. It’s where Prosecco originates from. A variety not seen much in Australia, but delicious and light. (94 points, Halliday Wine Companion)
- Pipan Steel Wines, Nebbiolo tesoro, 2018: Pipan Steel only grow Nebbiolo. They, in their own words, are obsessed with it, and for good reason; it is some of the best in the country! (95 points, Halliday Wine Companion)
- Bush Track, Chardonnay, 2018: Beautiful, slightly oaky and crisp. (96 points, Halliday Wine Companion)
- Ringer Reef, NV Sparkling Rosé, 2021: We love their Sparkling Rosé and the outdoor setting of their cellar door overlooking Mount Buffalo with the live music is amazing.
- Feathertop, Cabernet Sauvignon, 2019: A cool-climate edition of a classic wine brings fruitier notes than its warmer-climate cousins.
- Nacre, Grüner Veltliner, 2022: This Grüner Veltliner is an amazing alternative to a Riesling, taking on a mineral-driven flavour when produced in our cool climate. (Gold Medal, North East Victoria Wine Challenge)
- Spring Spur, Pinotage, 2021: The winemaker is from South Africa and her Pinotage is beautiful, not punchy like some of the South African Pinotage but full of flavour due to the cool climate of the Alpine Valleys.
(April 2026)