Restaurant Merricks
Merricks General Wine Store
3460 Frankston-Flinders Rd, Merricks VIC 3916 · $$$
The old Merricks general store reborn as a cellar door, bakery, and produce-forward lunch room.
Photo · BrooksieG / Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-4.0)
Merricks is a hinterland village on the Mornington Peninsula's southern wine country, 90 km from Melbourne, anchored by the Merricks General Wine Store crossroads.
Merricks is where the Peninsula's wine country starts to feel private. There is almost no main street to speak of, just a low-slung hall, winding vineyard roads, and a cluster of estates and restaurants that reward people who know where to turn off. The light is softer here than in Red Hill proper and the bay feels unexpectedly close. It is one of the Peninsula's best places to stay if your idea of a weekend away means vines outside the window, lunch that goes too long, and very little noise.
A quiet corridor between the ridge and the bay, with the best wine shop on the Peninsula.
Is Merricks the right base?
Who this place rewards - and who should keep driving
It's for
- locals
- wine buyers
- the stop that holds a day together
It's not for
- people who need lots of shops
- visitors wanting a stand-alone town
Treating it as a destination rather than a stop - it's part of a day, not the whole day.
Merricks in brief
Merricks in four lines
- 01 Merricks is a small rural village that punches above its size - Pt Leo Estate alone makes it worth the detour.
- 02 Best for: serious wine and art visitors; walkers on the Red Hill Rail Trail; people who value understatement.
- 03 Signature experience: lunch at Pt Leo Estate with the sculpture park, then a walk to Merricks Beach.
- 04 Half a day to a full day. No accommodation within the village itself.
A perfect day here
A day in Merricks
Merricks General Store for coffee and wine, one cellar door nearby, afternoon at the beach.
If you want the best version of Merricks, anchor the day around the General Store before noon.
- Editor's note
What's mapped here
Explore Merricks by experience
Category guides for Merricks
Deeper editorial guides focused on one experience category within Merricks.
Eat & drink
Where to eat and drink in Merricks
Restaurants, cafés, bakeries, and pubs - each with an editor note, not a star rating.
Restaurant Merricks
Point Leo Wine Terrace
3649 Frankston-Flinders Rd, Merricks VIC 3916 · $$$
The all-day casual option at Point Leo Estate, wood-fired flatbreads, estate wines, and a terrace facing the bay and the sculpture park.
Restaurant Merricks
Rare Hare at Willow Creek
166 Balnarring Rd, Merricks North VIC 3926 · $$$
Jackalope's relaxed lunch room, wood fire, vineyard views, and plates built for sharing over most of an afternoon.
See the editorial rankings → Best Restaurants on the Peninsula
Wine & producers
Cellar doors and makers around Merricks
The producers worth the appointment - and the ones already shaping the region's vintage conversation.
Winery Merricks
Baillieu Vineyard
51 Stanleys Rd, Merricks VIC 3916 · $$
A thoughtfully managed Merricks estate making elegant Chardonnay and Pinot Noir that rewards the drive to find it.
Winery Merricks
Elgee Park
89 Junction Rd, Merricks North VIC 3926 · $$
The Baillieu family's 1972 vineyard, the planting that started the modern Peninsula wine region, still in family hands, still making restrained Chardonnay and Viognier.
Winery Merricks
Kerri Greens
235 Stanleys Rd, Red Hill South VIC 3937 · $$
Tom McCarthy and Lucas Blanck's new-school Peninsula label, lighter-style Pinot, approachable Chardonnay, and a cellar door that feels like a bar.
See the editorial rankings → Best Cellar Doors on the Peninsula
Stay
Sleep in Merricks
When a place has a workable bed attached, it stops being a stop and starts becoming a base.
Glamping Merricks
Happy Glamper
Peninsula-wide, based Point Leo VIC 3916 · $$
Mobile bell-tent glamping that pitches styled tents at nominated Peninsula foreshore campsites, setup and packdown handled, children welcome.
Villa Merricks
Point Leo Estate Villas
3649 Frankston-Flinders Rd, Merricks VIC 3916 · $$$$
Private villas on the Point Leo Estate property, sculpture park, bay views, and the hatted restaurant directly below.
Spa Merricks
Spa by Jackalope
166 Balnarring Rd, Merricks North VIC 3926 · $$$$
The Peninsula's most design-led boutique spa, small, precise, and the natural pairing with a Jackalope stay or a Doot Doot Doot dinner.
See the editorial rankings → Best Places to Stay on the Peninsula
Get outside
Explore moves anchored to Merricks
Walks, beaches, lookouts, and markets worth scheduling around the meals.
Pt. Leo Estate Sculpture Park
The Pt. Leo Sculpture Park is a sixteen-acre outdoor gallery set inside the grounds of one of the Peninsula's most ambitious winery estates, with more than sixty significant works from major Australian and international artists - including pieces by Antony Gormley, Emily Floyd, and Marcus Tatton - scattered through the lawns and gardens above the vines. The walking loop takes about an hour to an hour and a half, and the best way to approach it is with a wine in hand from the estate's own terrace. Entry is free and the work is genuinely worth the attention - this is not a winery decorated with sculpture, it is a serious outdoor gallery inside a winery. Allow a full half-day if you are also eating at Pt. Leo Restaurant or Laura. This is one of the Peninsula's most complete art-and-food destinations and deserves the time.
Open the guide →Use it in sequence
Escapes that already route through Merricks
These plans have been written around the landscape here - not bolted on after.
Plan
Flinders and the Cape: A One-Night Reset
For people who want salt air, one excellent meal, and just enough structure to stop planning.
Plan
The Sorrento Off-Season Weekend
A two-night village-based plan that uses the tip of the Peninsula properly - back beach, national park, a village dinner, and the fort walk that turns the weekend into a landscape.
Plan
The Wellness Reset: A Two-Night Peninsula Weekend
Thermal pools, a long walk, a slow lunch, and two nights of actual sleep. For people whose weekend brief is simply to stop.
Read this place properly
Journal pieces connected to Merricks
Long-form editorial that builds the picture of a place beyond any single visit.
Editor's Letter 8 min
A Winter Peninsula Weekend: The Case for Coming in July
13 April 2026
Short days, cheap rooms, empty dining rooms, a fire in every cellar door with a hearth, and a coast that looks like a different country in a southerly. Winter is the Peninsula's most underrated season and the one that gives the region back to the people who actually live here.
Hub Guide 8 min
Merricks: The Peninsula Insider Guide
2 May 2026
Merricks is the understated corridor between bay and ridge where the Peninsula's wine country starts to feel private. Come for the general store, the estates, the pub and the rare pleasure of a district that seems to know exactly how little fuss it needs.
Insider Edit 10 min
Best Spas on the Mornington Peninsula - The Tier Guide
14 April 2026
The Mornington Peninsula is Australia's most serious wellness destination. This is the tier-ranked guide to hot springs, resort spas, and day spas - which to book, and for which kind of day.
Service 9 min
First Time on the Peninsula: The Honest Starter Guide
10 April 2026
You have never been to the Mornington Peninsula. You have a free weekend. You want to know what is actually good, what is overrated, and what the people who live here would tell you to do. This is that guide.
Planning guides
Service guides for your Merricks trip
Long-form editorial that helps you build a weekend, not just a list of places.
Go deeper
Explore Merricks by experience
Each guide focuses on one experience category - useful when you already know what you’re here for.
Keep going
Nearby places worth knowing next
Because a Peninsula trip is always made up of two or three pockets, not one.
Red Hill · village
Red Hill
On a misty basalt plateau above the Peninsula's central ridge, Red Hill has arranged some of the strongest food and wine in Victoria into a circuit that rewards the unhurried. A village by strict measure - a general store, a monthly market, vineyard restaurants that don't advertise from the highway - it nonetheless organises the whole upper Peninsula around itself. The winery restaurant cluster here - Ten Minutes by Tractor, Montalto, Paringa Estate, Principia - has no serious peer in the state. Come on Saturday; plan lunch first.
Peninsula Tip · town
Sorrento
Sorrento is where the Peninsula narrows to a point and the social temperature rises. This is old-money beach culture done with increasing sophistication - limestone cliffs, a ferry to Queenscliff across the Heads, ocean baths carved from rock at low tide - alongside a main street that has quietly evolved into something genuinely worth driving for. The summer crowd is real and relentless, but the town earns it. Off-season Sorrento is a revelation: the light changes, the restaurants empty out to their best selves, and you can walk the ocean beach from one end to the other without encountering anyone but locals. The back beach at dusk is one of the best things on the Peninsula, full stop. Stay at least two nights.
On the map
Merricks, by location
Every editorially verified pin in Merricks on one screen - toggle a category, click any marker for the editor's note.
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On the calendar in this place
Events in Merricks
Coming up in Merricks, pulled from the events registry.
- Every Wednesday
✦Complimentary Weekday Sculpture Park Entry for MP Locals at Pt. Leo Estate
Merricks
Mornington Peninsula and Frankston residents receive complimentary weekday entry to the Sculpture Park at Pt. Leo Estate throughout winter. Proof of local address required. T&Cs apply.
Arts - 1 May – 30 April 2027
✦Pt. Leo Estate Sculpture Park
Merricks
Australia's largest privately owned outdoor sculpture park: 16.5 acres, 60+ contemporary works, two walking loops, all set inside a working winery. Open daily 11am to 5pm.
Arts - 5 July – 19 July 2026
✦Sip & Sketch in the Sculpture Park at Pt. Leo Estate
Merricks
Winter school holiday family experience: kids get a hot chocolate and cookie while adults enjoy wine. All-day Sculpture Park access included. Booking required.
Arts