On Saturday March 30, Oakridge Restaurant and Winery in the Yarra Valley will host permaculture experts Kirsten Bradley and Nick Ritar of Milkwood for a special one-off dinner. Oakridge’s Co-Executive Chefs Jo Barrett and Matt Stone will join Kirsten and Nick to deliver an event celebrating a joint passion for wild foods, fermentation and farming. Guests will enjoy a one-off menu by Matt and Jo, made from ingredients foraged and sourced locally and grown on the Oakridge estate.
Select Oakridge wine vintages will be featured, reinforcing the connection of local flavour and the taste of the Yarra Valley. During dinner, Kirsten and Nick will lead a lively discussion of the evolution of wild foods in Australia, sustainable farming and how we can all find a little piece of wilderness wherever we are.
Oakridge is above all a serendipitous alignment of ideologies. All wines and dishes produced at Oakridge are unified by a profound sense of place which comes from a deep respect for the surrounding land and community of Victoria’s famed Yarra Valley. A shared obsession with the earth runs through all aspects of Oakridge, with each wine and dish connected to and enriched by the environment from which they come. As self-proclaimed ‘avant gardeners’, Oakridge’s chefs and winemakers have a deep respect for the principles of permaculture. In this special dinner, guests will be given an opportunity to understand the interconnectedness of each ingredient on their plate and wine in their glass.
Chefs Matt Stone and Jo Barrett took over the Oakridge kitchen in 2015, excited by the prospect of being surrounded by nature and a community who thrive on producing beautiful food and beverage products. They lovingly refer to the food at Oakridge as ‘Yarra Valley Cuisine’, as they use only what they can grow, source and forage from the local area.
Kirsten Bradley and Nick Ritar left the city ten years ago with a dream of living simply and within their means. They started a small permaculture farm called Milkwood. Since then, they’ve been growing food and sharing skills wherever they lived or travelled, from building biochar stoves to creating rooftop community gardens and teaching permaculture design. They currently live, grow, forage and keep bees on their two-acre permaculture farm near Daylesford.
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