Yarra Valley Wine Tours with wine tasting, lunches or cheese platters in beautiful lush scenery are one of the most popular day trips from Melbourne. The Yarra Valley is about 1 hour northeast of Melbourne. It is internationally recognised as a leading cool climate wine region.

You have two options for your Yarra Valley Wine tour. You can either self-drive and hop into the wineries, food outlets and sights of your choice, or you can join an organised tour. The popular mini bus tours will take you on a pre-scheduled course or you might prefer to tailor make an individual tour with your own chauffer in a limousine.

There are advantages and drawbacks to either option. Here are our experiences with Yarra Valley Wine tours.

Self Drive Wine Tours

The first time we went on the wine trail, we drove ourselves up into the Yarra Valley. You drive about 45 minutes to get out of Melbourne, and then as suburbia finishes, just after Lilydale, you are in the Yarra Valley wine region. The scenery changes to wide open rolling hills, with the mountains in the distance.

You can drive along the Warburton Highway into the Seville wine areas, along the Maroonda Highway towards Healesville, or up the Melba Highway towards Marysville, and call into one of the wineries or food outlets of your choice.

If you want to self-drive your Yarra Valley Wine Tours, I recommend you do some research at which winery you are going to stop. Otherwise, as you drive along, it is easy to end up driving past a lot of the driveways of the individual wineries, and miss out on what you were looking for.

This happened to us on our first wine tour. However, we ended up for lunch in an intimate café in Healesville that had some great food and local wine. Our favourite Yarra Valley drive from there has become the Healesville Yarra Glen Road.

A couple of must-dos to put on your itinerary are the TarraWarra Museum of Art with a great collection of well known Australian artists. It is a worthwhile stop and definitely a treat for the senses. From there, driving back around towards Lilydale, you can stop at the Yarra Valley Dairy. They specialise in fresh soft style cheeses, just like the farmhouse cheeses of France and Italy.

We had fresh bread, a cheese platter and local boutique wines on their veranda with a great view. We really enjoyed the unpretentiousness of the dairy, which gave us the real country feel. Together with stunning scenery, this was our best Yarra Valley experience.

Organised Wine Tours

The good thing about organised Yarra Valley Wine Tours is that you don’t have to drive and that way, can really enjoy the wines, the rolling hills and stunning views as you sit back and relax.

We went on an organised minibus Yarra Valley tour, which took us to some selected wineries. They take you up some dirt roads to some small boutique wineries and secret spots, which we would not have found ourselves.

We had lunch at the winery, found out about wine making, and met some nice people. We learned that sparking wine produced in any region other than the Champagne is not Champagne, and tasted some great Yarra Valley sparkling wines. We would have liked to linger a bit longer at some places, but this is the payoff of taking an organised tour.

There is another option for your Yarra Valley wine tours, which has the best of both worlds. You can hire your own driver or chauffeur who takes you where you want to go in a comfortable car or limousine. They have a lot of local knowledge; you give them your brief and off you go.

The Yarra Valley is a special place. Although so close to Melbourne, once you get out of the city it seems to function on country time. We have learned to allow lots of time and to leave early. Even then, we tend to come back late. After a day in such a different world it feels like you've had a longer holiday away.