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The Yarra Valley has a reputation for good wines (especially whites and ‘champagne’) and food and has had since Moet & Chandon set up in this upstart vineyard region in the 1980s. See the archived travel feature on how it got started.

So it is ironic that my best food and drink memories of the region – after a weekend visit—are a pizza and a bottle of red that didn’t come from the region. Well, the pizza did. But the wine came from Bendigo.

It was the perfect pizza. Perfect. And that’s from a man who has devoured ‘Frisbees’ of the stuff from Melbourne to Maine. Even survived that ghastly, albeit brief, fad for what they called a ‘pan fried’ pizza which had the texture and appeal of a soggy sponge.

The perfect pizza was made by Guiseppe in his beloved wood-fired oven at the Roundstone Winery on Willow Bend Drive at Yarra Glen.

I bent the low-salt diet for a day and had a salami, ham, tomato paste and cheese pizza while Mrs. Nosebag opted for the vegetarian. The crust was impeccably super-thin and crunchy but cooked in a uniform way so that each slice stayed firm and didn’t droop like an uncontrolled tongue.

The bottle of red was a 1997 Balgownie Estate cabernet sauvignon at a dinner at the new, massive, Balgownie Estate Vineyard Resort and Spa that looms, in the hills, bathed in twinkling lights, like the spacecraft in Close Encounters of a Third Kind.

We went for the Bendigo red because Mrs. Nosebag likes a ‘big red’. Me too. And there aren’t too many reds that you have to ‘drink with a knife and fork’ produced in the cold climes of the Yarra Valley. To a full-bodied (that’s the wine not your body) red drinker the YV offerings seem a tad thin.

Their chardonnays and sav blancs are a different story. Some of the best have that distinctive hint of New Zealand’s Marlborough region.

Two of the most touted restaurants, and they all always require bookings are Bella Vedere (five-course degustation dinners and very popular Sunday lunches) and Cru (not open Sundays).

I had heard in Melbourne of a Yarra Valley vineyard’s restaurant that had fantastic views and served a delish Sunday indoor barbecue. We found it perched on a hilltop, tried it, and were not disappointed. It was the RiverStone Estate on Skye Rd, Coldstream.

Carnivores will have trouble getting through the huge steaks. We had the prawns but they also barbecue calamari and barramundi.

It was a delightful way to spend a leisurely Sunday afternoon. A couple of glasses of Riverstone cabernet-merlot and out to the terrace with the Ranges as a backdrop and time for some passionfruit cheesecake and a glass of Riverstone’s own 10-year-old Tokay.

For dinner one night we went to the local pub on the main street in Yarra Glen and I had a huge, tasty, steak and mushroom pie with non-soggy pastry (heaps of it) and a surprisingly good “stewy” sauce.

The breakfasts are a gem at B & Bs on such weekend excursions. I don’t know what it is about country mornings. Maybe it’s the crisp air, the hint of fog or the icy grass crunching underfoot that makes you wake up with such an appetite. Most of them serve huge cooked breakfasts of bacon and eggs and sausages and toast. But it’s more than enough to have their big bowls of fresh local fruit and yogurt.

There are heaps of B & Bs in the Yarra Valley (see the Hinch Travel feature).We stayed at the Araluen Lodge near Yarra Glen.

They had the biggest, fattest, fresh and juicy strawberries you could imagine. And some slices of juicy oranges from, I think, South Australia. Greta, the owner of Araluen Lodge (with builder husband Geoff) makes an early morning daily foray to the local fruit and vegie market for fresh produce.

A confession: On our final day guess where we went for lunch? Back to Roundstone for another perfect pizza.