Award Winning Wines From Darling Downs
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About
The emerging vineyards in Queensland’s Darling Downs defy the odds to prove subtropical climates can produce exciting boutique wines.
Visitors keen to experience a wine trip with a difference will love the variety of attractions throughout the Darling Downs, with cellar doors offering unique styles, plus heritage sites and dramatic scenery. Wine production in the region has been resuscitated by vanguard viticulture pioneers plying their craft to yield fine wines despite the ongoing challenge of wet summers. Expect to taste an array of wines, including verdelho and merlot.
Here you can also experience some of Australia’s most incredible natural landscapes, including the subtropical rainforests of the Main Range National Park as well as the Queen Mary Falls. The region is made up of farming country, dominated by rolling hills and grassy plains outside the region’s largest city, Toowoomba. Travellers exploring the region can expect to make the drive from Brisbane within three and a half hours.
James Halliday on the Darling Downs
Centred around the town of Toowoomba, this has been a famous grazing and farming region for more than 150 years. At the end of the 19th century, wine production was a significant activity, but rapidly declined in the wake of Federation. Viticulture is arguably as well suited to this area as it is to the Granite Belt or South Burnett; this is reflected, perhaps, in the substantial size of the larger wine enterprises, although a number of smaller ventures happily co-exist. The absolute number of visitors may be less than that of either the Granite Belt or South Burnett, but the higher level of interest in wine is sufficient compensation.