Richard Cornish

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West Gippsland Railtown Food & Wine Festival

This Sunday, March 5 sees the historic town of Garfield come alive with the West Gippsland Railtown Food and Wine Festival. It’s the brainchild of the local community who want to see more visitors make the most of the West Gippsland towns serviced by V Line trains. Garfield was already a thriving timber town when the train line came through in 1877. Back then, the village was known as Cannibal Creek. It was renamed after the assassination of US President James Garfield in 1887. Today the wood fire bakery and nearby winery carry the original name. Next Sunday’s festival sees the grassy common behind the Garfield Hotel taken over by the best local food and wine.

The bakers at Cannibal Creek Bakehouse are known for long, slow-fermented sourdough using artisan millers’ flour. They are teaming up with Sallie Jones from Gippsland Jersey with some delicious riffs on the simple art of bread and butter. Butcher John Preston from Country Style Meats is an excellent butcher. He practices whole carcass butchery and makes superb smallgoods. His hams are worth catching the train for. He and his daughter Meg are slow cooking some of his local grass-fed beef to fill bread rolls along with a good slathering of gravy. Meg has her own business called Country Style Grazing and will be filling grazing boxes with her dad’s ham, kabana, pastrami, smoked turkey and chicken. West Gippsland is becoming known as an up-and-coming wine region offering some really good quality cool climate wines. The festival gives you the chance to see what the winemakers at Cannibal Creek Winery and Swampfox Winery are doing with their grapes. The Cannibal Creek pinot noirs are exceptionally good value, while the Swampfox wines are considered to be under-priced. A region to watch! West Gippsland is also home to a pioneering native foods nursery and kitchen. Peppermint Ridge Farm grows native food plants such as river mint, elderberries, sassafras, Illawarra plum, and native oregano. They will be selling their plants at the festival and offering tastings and sales of their spices, and spice mixes, including their macadamia dukkha. The region is also home to market gardens and farms. Jeremy Van Boxtel from HomeGrown Farm is a pastured egg producer delivering to Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. He’ll have a good supply of googs to take back on V Line. Before leaving the festival, drop by and see Greg from Brewster’s Café and Foodstore. He’s making a special house-made gelato for the event. Together with lawn games, and live music this promises to be a long, relaxing day in the country, an hour’s drive east of Melbourne on the M1 or take V Line from Southern Cross.

West Gippsland Railtown Food & Wine Festival

Sunday 5 March 2023,

95 Main Street, Garfield

Grassed area behind the Garfield Hotel

I am proud to have West Gippsland Progress Association as a client.