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Winter Insider · August 2026 Winter 2026

Red Hill & Merricks

Tuerong

Tuerong vineyard rows running down toward a quiet farm road

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

Tuerong is a rural hinterland locality on the Mornington Peninsula's northern wine country, 70 km from Melbourne, known for the Quealy Winemakers cellar door and the Devilbend Reservoir.

Tuerong is where some of the Peninsula's best bottles come from roads most visitors never take. Yabby Lake is the anchor - Halliday Top 100, relaxed cellar-door program - and the same back roads hold Dexter Wines and a cluster of low-volume producers whose fruit ends up in Melbourne's better wine lists. Quiet, specific, worth the detour.

The wine-country back door, where some of the Peninsula's best bottles come from roads most visitors never take.

Is Tuerong the right base?

Who this place rewards - and who should keep driving

It's for

  • serious wine drinkers
  • quiet hinterland loops
  • Devilbend detours

It's not for

  • people wanting a village to walk around
  • travellers without a booking plan

Dropping in without knowing where you are headed - Tuerong only works if you choose the wineries in advance.

Tuerong in brief

Tuerong in four lines

  1. 01 Tuerong is a rural locality best known to wine enthusiasts as the address of Yabby Lake Vineyard and Dromana Estate.
  2. 02 Best for: serious wine visitors; walkers at Devilbend Reservoir; travellers who want hinterland quiet without driving all the way to Red Hill.
  3. 03 Half a day; usually paired with Moorooduc or Mornington.

A perfect day here

A day in Tuerong

Yabby Lake late morning, one more tasting nearby, lunch with a vineyard view, Devilbend walk if there is still daylight.

This is the pocket where Melbourne sommeliers buy wine, which tells you more than any brochure will.

- Editor's note

Wine & producers

Cellar doors and makers around Tuerong

The producers worth the appointment - and the ones already shaping the region's vintage conversation.

All cellar doors →
Winery Tuerong

Dromana Estate

555 Old Moorooduc Rd, Tuerong VIC 3933 · $$

One of the Peninsula's founding names, cool-climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir alongside a small run of Italian-leaning bottlings on the quieter hinterland side.

cellar doorslow
Winery Tuerong

Onannon

110 Tuerong Rd, Tuerong VIC 3933 · $$$

Three winemakers, small-batch Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and cult-favourite status among Australia's best sommeliers.

cellar doorslow
Winery Tuerong

Yabby Lake Vineyard

86-112 Tuerong Rd, Tuerong VIC 3933 · $$$

Tom Carson's single-block Chardonnay and Pinot Noir program, poured from a relaxed cellar door with one of the Peninsula's loveliest lunch decks.

cellar doorlong lunch

Read this place properly

Journal pieces connected to Tuerong

Long-form editorial that builds the picture of a place beyond any single visit.

More in the Journal →

Planning guides

Service guides for your Tuerong trip

Long-form editorial that helps you build a weekend, not just a list of places.

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Where it sits

Tuerong on the Peninsula

See the full Peninsula map →

Keep going

Nearby places worth knowing next

Because a Peninsula trip is always made up of two or three pockets, not one.

Hinterland · village

Moorooduc

Moorooduc is the wine country's quieter northern edge - further from the ridge road, less visited, different enough in soil and latitude to grow serious chardonnay that the broader market still underrates. Moorooduc Estate and Barmah Park are the anchors. Use it for a slow cellar-door morning before heading up to Red Hill for lunch.

Mornington · town

Mornington

Mornington was the gateway town for a long time - the first real stop on the road south, somewhere to buy petrol before pressing on to beaches and vineyards. That undersells it now. A genuinely good main street, a Wednesday farmers' market on the Esplanade worth getting up for, a foreshore with bathing boxes and a saltwater pool - Mornington has quietly become a whole-day destination rather than a waypoint. It's also the most practical Peninsula base: north to Mount Martha's beaches, south to Red Hill's vineyards, fifteen minutes from coast in either direction.

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.

Curated by our editors.

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Peninsula This Weekend 18 to 19 July

July sits in the quieter stretch of Peninsula winter, and that is the point. The lead booking is a truffle hunt at Red Hill. Sunday is for the sculpture park at Pt. Leo.

  • How to Build a Red Hill Saturday
  • The Cellar Door Short List
  • Things to Do on the Mornington Peninsula
Read in 3 minutes · Used all weekend

On the map

Tuerong, by location

Every editorially verified pin in Tuerong on one screen - toggle a category, click any marker for the editor's note.

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