Crittenden Estate

I could tell as I was driving up that this was a serious venue with a large carpark. So as usual with these sort of places I was already wondering whether the wines stacked up, how much focus was left on the wines and cellar door and how it would rate as a venue. You have to walk a bit from the car park to the cellar door and although there are vines to look at, it's always nicer if you are forced to walk through pretty gardens, along a cared-for path rather than across a slab of concrete. I know, I'm picky. Anyway, I opened the glass door to the large cellar door and peeked into the restaurant area on my way to the restroom. Looked nice, weeping willow views, nice lawns, that sort of thing. Back to the cellar door I noticed lots of produce on offer and had time to investigate a little and wonder if all these wines with different labels were part of this place's repertoire. And indeed they were. The tasting list had no less than five sections under different labels, all with whites and reds. I was confused. I asked the lady how tastings are done here and she said to pick the ones I liked. I wanted to point out that I don't yet know which ones I like! Since there was no order to them I found this disconcerting and I'm sure the average punter would to. I prefer to be led through the process by the all-knowledgeable counter hand. I didn't want to do any work. I had it explained, as I showed my discomfort, that there's a grown-in-Mornington label (Crittenden Estate), a Spanish grape label (Los Hermanos), an experimental label (Pinocchio), a drink now label (Geppetto) and another label that is from Europe. Well I pointed to this and that and tasted some wine. I probably tried half of what was on offer and this was probably just as well. My favourites were the Tempranillo and the Homenaje a Cataluna (both from the Los Hermanos label). There were others that were good as well but to be honest the whole experience was so confusing that I just left it at these two.