Feeling a personal need to seize the day, wine writer RICHARD CALVER resolves to sample the Yarra Valley before it’s too late (and suburbia creeps in).

THE notion of establishing and then seeking to fulfil a pre-death wish list was popularised in the 2007 movie “The Bucket List”. 

Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson play two terminally ill cancer patients who decide to abandon the hospital and seek to achieve the things that are on their wish list for life. 

It is a movie that reinforces the need to seize the day. That issue has become important to me in 2022 because my best friend of more than 20 years died this year from brain cancer and two other close friends also passed away. 

So, even though I had lived in Melbourne for 22 years, I’d never visited the Yarra Valley wineries. My Melbourne friends were telling me that the suburbs are slowly creeping into this wine-growing area, particularly at the western end of the valley, and that the better state of the roads means that it is only an hour from the city of Melbourne. Act now.

With a friend I’ve known for nearly 50 years, I booked a trip to the Yarra Valley through a tour company called Australian Journeys. It was good to have someone else to drive after the intensity of concentration now needed when driving the Hume from Canberra to Melbourne: the road surface has suffered from the 2022 flooding; ruts and roadworks abound.

The tour was for the two of us, being picked up and dropped off in air-conditioned comfort (the temperature got to 33C) and with a two-course lunch at Rochford Wines included, as well as tastings at four wineries, inclusive of a pre-lunch tasting at Rochford. For the day it was $339 a head. 

Adam Firmin, the owner and our driver, was a very pleasant, obliging bloke who obviously loved this region and was knowledgeable about its topography and the wineries we visited.

The first stop was Chandon. As they say, no champagne, no gain so we forced ourselves to taste eight of the Chandon wines at this glorious cellar door. 

Eleven in the morning is a tad early to start drinking so the spittoon saw some activity, although when it came to a taste of the Late Disgorged 2008 (not usually available to the public for tasting) it was not wasted (and neither were we – lots of rehydration is the key). 

This wine had a youthful bouquet and was complex although well integrated. It had a toasty finish but clean, with a hint of citrus, and was our pick of the range offered. 

Joe Foo, the Chandon Wine Experience manager, was a very welcoming host, leading us through the tastings in an unhurried, knowledgeable manner, despite the growing press of people who came flooding into the light and airy tasting area. 

This likeable man told of how he’d started in the industry as an event manager at St Hubert’s (which we later visited) and then got his current job. After explaining the bucket list notion to him, I asked: “What are you going to value most in 2023, Joe?”

His answer was inspiring: “This year I saw the tragic loss of both my mother and father. It brought me closer to them and I have to give family even more time. 

“My partner has two kids and spending time with her and the kids will be a bigger priority for me because my loss has shown the value that family has above all. I want to experience, you know, happiness with my family.”

And that brings me back to “The Bucket List”. In the movie, the Morgan Freeman character mentions two questions asked of the dead by the gods at the entrance to heaven: Have you found joy in your life? Has your life brought joy to others?