Food & Wine

The menus of many Orange restaurants include fresh local produce. The fresh local food and wine make for a fine dining experience and will leave a lasting impression on your palate. There are a number of cosmopolitan cafes, fine dining and family restaurants in the city and surrounding areas. Restaurants include authentic Japanese, Thai, Chinese, French, Italian and Indian just to name a few.

Each Autumn Orange hosts FOOD Week, which is a chance for local producers to showcase their produce. Follow this link for the latest information on the FOOD Week events.

From October to April is berry picking season and with a variety of berries being grown in the area, picking is a great activity for the whole family. It certainly is a delicious way to spent your time!

Local produce including award winning honey, jam, sauces and preserves are available at the Visitor Information Centre, these make a great gift for a friend or yourself. A personalised gift basket can be made to suit individual tastes.

With such variety on offer, Orange is fast becoming known as the place to enjoy world class culinary delights.

Wines of the Orange Region

The Region

The Orange Region includes vineyards planted above six hundred metres in altitude within Blayney, Cabonne and Orange local government areas. A young district, the earliest plantings were in the early 1980s, there are now some 1350 hectares under vine. The Region has a reliable rainfall, a dry autumn and a cold winter - all of which gives Orange an enviable natural advantage.

The district boasts over twenty-five cellar doors and approximately fifty vineyards all producing award winning cool climate wine of unique and distinct charatcer. Wine tasting is available from the cellar doors on weekends, public holidays and during the week at selected wineries by appointment. An Orange Region Wines brochure is available from the Orange Visitor Information Centre.

Wine Styles

The Orange region has a wide range of sites suitable for most major grape varieties. The higher vineyards of the region near Mount Canobolas range up to 1050 metres above sea level and are particularly suited to Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Merlot. At this altitude vineyards can often be dedicated to sparkling wine production with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir dominating.

White Wines

The Orange region has built a substantial reputation for its cool climate chardonnay with wines from many regional labels [Rosemount Estate, Highland Heritage Estate, Brangayne of Orange and Canobolas-Smith Wines] winning trophies for their Chardonnays in recent years. By rights, the place of Chardonnay should be challenged by Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc in the next few years as both these varieties have shown great promise. Typically, Sauvignon Blanc will have natural acidity and fruit flavours in the light tropical range.

Red Wines

Not yet known for its Shiraz wine, the Orange region is displaying enormous potential for good wines from this great variety. Initially a product of the Middle East and Southern France, Shiraz, like Chardonnay is a very adaptable variety. In Orange, Shiraz has a rich spicy fruit character with hints of white pepper and can be used well as a blending variety or by itself.

Merlot, the rave variety of the past five years, particularly in America where consumers were very keen to get their hands on anything with Merlot in it. Orange has a good percentage of Merlot planted with the best examples coming from higher vineyards. Soft and round on the palate with sweet fruit characters in the plum area, Merlot is a variety well worth chasing.

The backbone variety of many of the best red wines of the region is Cabernet Sauvignon. Cabernet Sauvignon has flavours in the blackberry fruit spectrum with lots of structure and complexity. It is not uncommon to come across wines that are fruity but also leathery - that is they are chewy in a most delightful way! The Orange region is already producing some of the best Cabernet based reds in NSW and the future is looking very good.