The old Merricks general store reborn as a cellar door, bakery, and produce-forward lunch room.
Known for Original Merricks Village StoreBarragunda Wines Cellar DoorWood-Fired Pizza and Sunday RoastPeninsula Produce Retail
Photo · Peninsula Insider
Why we’d goThe room that makes the Peninsula feel like it still belongs to itself, unhurried, unfussy, and entirely of where it is.
Merricks General Wine Store occupies what used to be the village's original general store, and it has turned those bones into one of the most likeable rooms on the Peninsula. The front of the building is part cellar door for the Baillieu family's Barragunda wines, part retail for Peninsula producers, chutneys, oils, cheeses, and the back is a long, daylit dining room looking out over paddocks and eucalypts. The building has been changed and not changed at the same time, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.
The food is deliberately unfussy: a short menu that leans on pizza from a wood oven, a day's-catch fish, a lamb roast on Sundays, and pastries from the bakery that are worth arriving early for. The wine list is smartly priced and reflects the fact that the owners make wine themselves.
Good for a lunch that is not trying to be an event. Good for breakfast after a Merricks cottage stay. Very good for anyone who wants to know what a Peninsula village still can feel like.
Worth knowing
If you only do one thing
Arrive in time for a bakery pastry, sit in the back dining room with a glass of Barragunda, and order the Sunday lamb roast if you are there for it.
Works well with
Stonier Wines · Rare Hare at Willow Creek
Filed under SlowLong LunchGardenFireplaceAll YearCouplesFamiliesLocalsFirst Timers
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51 Stanleys Rd, Merricks VIC 3916 · $$
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