Cellar-door tastings, Queensland's hinterland wineries and a long winery lunch — door-to-door from Brisbane. Visit Sirromet, Mount Tamborine, the Scenic Rim and the Granite Belt on a small-group or private wine tour, finished with a glass of our own Cooee Wine.
By Cooee Tours · Brisbane locals since 1974 · Published · Updated
South East Queensland has quietly become one of Australia's most rewarding wine destinations — and the best of it sits within easy reach of the Brisbane CBD. Our Brisbane wine tours take the driving, planning and designated-driver worry off your hands so you can simply taste, relax and enjoy the day.
In a single morning you can be at the cellar door of Sirromet — Queensland's most awarded winery — barely half an hour from the city. Push a little further and you're among the boutique vineyards and distilleries of Mount Tamborine, the rural cellar doors of the Scenic Rim and Canungra Valley, or the cool-climate heights of the Granite Belt around Stanthorpe, home to the famous "Strange Bird" alternative varieties.
Whether you want the Hinterland Heritage day at $160, the $220 fare with a two-course winery lunch, or a fully tailored private or corporate wine tour, there's a Cooee tour to suit. Expert local guides, Brisbane pickup, and our own coach fleet make it effortless from the moment we collect you to the last glass of Cooee Wine.
The Scenic Rim in one unhurried day — three cellar doors: Albert River Wines, O'Reilly's Canungra Valley Vineyards and Mount Nathan Winery, with guided tastings at each, bottled water on board, and a glass of our own Cooee Wine to finish. Buy lunch at the valley winery restaurant on the day and keep the fare down.
AUD $160per person
Book without lunch
The same three cellar doors and the same guide, plus a two-course lunch at a winery restaurant with valley views, served between the second and third tastings. The most popular way to do the day: nothing to buy, nothing to organise, back in Brisbane by 5:30pm.
AUD $220per person
Book with lunchPrefer Tamborine Mountain? Our Mt Tamborine wine tour runs a shorter day on the plateau. Travelling as a group? Our private and corporate wine tours are fully customisable and run on our own fleet — perfect for celebrations, team days and hens parties. Enquire for a tailored quote →
Queensland's flagship winery — it describes itself as the state's most awarded — around 35 minutes from the Brisbane CBD, set over 560 acres with views toward Moreton Bay. With a cellar door, a long list of show awards in its own trophy cabinet and the Tuscan Terrace restaurant, Sirromet is the easiest taste of premium Queensland wine.
About an hour from Brisbane in the Gold Coast hinterland, Mount Tamborine packs boutique wineries, craft distilleries and Gallery Walk into one rainforest-clad mountain. Taste local reds, whites and unique varietals, sample handcrafted gin and liqueurs, and soak up sweeping hinterland views between cellar doors.
A scenic country drive south of Brisbane leads to the boutique vineyards of the Scenic Rim and Canungra Valley — relaxed family-run cellar doors, paddock-to-plate produce and the kind of unhurried long lunch the region is loved for. A favourite for groups who want space to breathe.
Queensland's premier cool-climate region, roughly three hours south-west of Brisbane, with vineyards 600–1500m above sea level. The Granite Belt around Stanthorpe is the home of the famous "Strange Bird" alternative varieties — Verdelho, Fiano, Tempranillo and more. Best enjoyed on our extended full-day or overnight tours.
Prefer to stay in town? We can include a Brisbane city urban winery experience — blend-your-own and barrel-room tastings in the heart of Fortitude Valley — on private itineraries.
Every Cooee wine tour finishes with something you won't get anywhere else — a tasting of Cooee Wine, our own house label. It's our way of rounding out the day and giving you a take-home memory of the region you've just explored.
Ask your guide about the story behind the label, the varieties in the range, and how to take a bottle (or a case) home with you. Cooee Wine is poured on every scheduled tour and can feature front-and-centre on private and corporate bookings — ideal for gifting, celebrations and client days.
✦ Included on every Cooee wine tourFrom the hilltop cellar door at Sirromet to the misty heights of the Granite Belt — settle into the day while we take care of every kilometre, door to door.
Choose Your TourPickup from designated Brisbane meeting points. Times are approximate; the order of cellar doors can change with venue opening hours, weddings and functions.
Want a shorter day? The Mt Tamborine wine tour runs about six hours on the plateau. Watching the budget? See our cheaper wine tour options. Chasing the cool-climate drops? Ask us about Granite Belt and overnight Stanthorpe tours.
Each of our four regions offers a genuinely different day. Sirromet at Mount Cotton is the closest — barely 40 minutes from the CBD — pairing a polished cellar door and restaurant with the convenience of a shorter touring day; ideal for visitors on a tight schedule or groups mixing wine novices with enthusiasts. Mount Tamborine stacks wine with altitude: cellar doors, a celebrated gallery walk, rainforest lookouts and craft distilleries on one green mountain an hour from Brisbane.
The Scenic Rim delivers the farm-gate day — boutique vineyards set against World Heritage-listed mountain country, paired with produce stops that earned the region a place on global must-visit lists. And the Granite Belt around Stanthorpe is the connoisseur's pick: Queensland's only true high-altitude wine region, 50+ family-run cellar doors and the famous Strange Bird alternative-variety trail, best done as a full day or an overnight escape.
Seasonally, every region works year-round, but each has a peak: vintage energy from February to April, the Granite Belt's fireside Brass Monkey winter from June to August, and spring's long-lunch weather everywhere. Unsure which suits your group? Call us on 0409 661 342 — matching people to the right wine day is what fifty years of touring has taught us to do well.
Fifty years of Queensland touring shows up in the details. Routes are re-planned weekly around what's actually pouring well — new releases, museum tastings, winemaker availability — rather than locked to a brochure printed last year. Group sizes stay genuinely small, so cellar doors give our guests the long-version welcome rather than the bus-tour speech. Lunches are booked at tables we'd choose for our own families, dietary requirements are confirmed with every venue in advance, and the day ends at your door, not a depot.
And then there's the glass of Cooee Wine to finish — our own label, poured as a thank-you on the way home. It's a small ritual, but it says what we believe: a wine tour should feel like being shown around by friends who happen to know every winemaker in the region. That's the standard, on every departure, in every region we run.
No expertise required — genuinely. Taste in the order poured (lighter to fuller), ask the person behind the bar what they're proudest of, and never feel obliged to finish a pour; the spittoon is a professional's tool, not an insult. Eat the breakfast, drink water between cellar doors, and bring a modest budget for bottles, because the wine you fall for on tour is very often one you can't buy anywhere else.
Most importantly: the best question at any tasting bench is "what's the story behind this one?" Queensland's winemakers answer it brilliantly — and hearing it standing where the wine was made is the whole reason touring beats a bottle shop, every single time.
Most Brisbane wine tours name a region and leave the venues to chance. Ours names the cellar doors. The scheduled Hinterland Heritage day runs the same three stops every departure, so you know before you book exactly where you will be standing at 10am, 11:30am and 2pm — and you can read up on each one first.
The first tasting of the day, at a cellar door set in a historic Queensland homestead beside the Albert River, at the foot of Tamborine Mountain. Reds, whites and sparkling from the estate's own label, poured at the bar rather than served to a table — the format that lets you ask questions.
The valley stop, and the one guests photograph most: a riverside vineyard with lawns running down to Canungra Creek, part of the same O'Reilly family story as the rainforest retreat up the mountain. On the $220 fare the two-course lunch is served here between the tastings.
The final pour, at a family-run cellar door in the Gold Coast hinterland. By now the group has a palate warmed up over two tastings, which is exactly when a small producer's range is most interesting. Bottles bought here ride home on the coach with you.
Cellar doors close for weddings and functions; on those days we substitute a comparable venue in the same valley and tell you before departure. Opening hours, tasting fees for walk-in visitors and current releases are the venues' own — read our guide to the Heritage route for the background on each stop.
There are a dozen wine tours sold out of Brisbane and, read quickly, they all promise the same afternoon. Five questions separate them. We answer each for our own tour so you can hold the others to the same standard.
For context, comparable full-day Tamborine Mountain wine tours with a two-course lunch were advertised at up to around $340 per person in 2026. The Hinterland Heritage day with lunch is $220 — and the only wine tour from Brisbane that ends with a glass of a label the tour company makes itself.
The scheduled Heritage day suits couples, solo travellers and small groups who want a fixed date and an online booking. When the group is the occasion, a private day on our own fleet is usually the better fit — same regions, your itinerary, your pickup points.
Private vehicle, a route built around the bride, and a lunch venue that expects you.
Milestone birthdays on the vines, from an intimate table for six to a full coach.
Client hospitality and team days with a single invoice and a professional guide.
The quieter options: long lunches, cellar-door stays and the Granite Belt overnight.
How to do a wine day from Brisbane for less without losing the good bits.
Stanthorpe and the Granite Belt when one day is not enough.
Both are the same nine-hour Hinterland Heritage day — the same three cellar doors (Albert River Wines, O'Reilly's Canungra Valley Vineyards and Mount Nathan Winery), the same guide and the same 8:30am Brisbane pickup. The $160 fare leaves lunch to you: buy it at the winery restaurant where the group stops. The $220 fare includes a two-course lunch there, so the whole day is paid for before you leave home. Both finish with a glass of our own Cooee Wine. A shorter Mt Tamborine day and extended or overnight tours to the Granite Belt around Stanthorpe are also available.
Depending on the tour you choose, we visit Sirromet at Mount Cotton (which describes itself as Queensland's most awarded winery, around 35 minutes from the Brisbane CBD), the boutique cellar doors and distilleries of Mount Tamborine in the Gold Coast hinterland, and the rural vineyards of the Scenic Rim and Canungra Valley. Our extended full-day and overnight tours head to Queensland's premier cool-climate wine region, the Granite Belt around Stanthorpe, home to the famous "Strange Bird" alternative varieties. We tailor the itinerary on private tours.
Yes. Every tour includes door-to-door pickup and drop-off, an air-conditioned vehicle and a knowledgeable local guide, all cellar-door tasting fees, bottled water and snacks on board, and a glass of our own Cooee Wine. The $220 fare also includes a two-course lunch at a winery restaurant with valley views. Bottles you buy at the cellar doors are carried safely on board so you can bring your favourites home.
Absolutely — private and group wine tours are one of our specialities. Because Cooee operates its own coach and minibus fleet (through Brisbane Hire Bus), we can carry anything from an intimate group of four in a luxury vehicle through to larger corporate teams, milestone celebrations and hens parties in 13- to 24-seat buses and coaches. Private itineraries are fully customisable — choose your regions, wineries, lunch venue and pickup points. See our private & corporate tours or contact us for a tailored quote.
We offer door-to-door pickup and drop-off from Brisbane CBD and most greater Brisbane suburbs. Pickup is usually between 8am and 9am depending on your location and the regions on your itinerary. Pickup from Ipswich, Redlands, Logan and the Gold Coast can also be arranged on private tours, sometimes with a small surcharge for outlying areas.
Guests must be 18 years or over to take part in wine tastings, in line with Queensland responsible service of alcohol requirements. Cellar doors serve under Responsible Service of Alcohol guidelines and our guides may decline further service where appropriate. For family-friendly outings that don't centre on wine tasting, ask us about our other Queensland day tours.
Wine tours run rain or shine — cellar doors, tasting rooms and lunch venues are all indoors, and a moody, misty hinterland day can be especially atmospheric. If a particular winery is unexpectedly closed, your guide will substitute a comparable cellar door so your tasting line-up stays full. Severe weather that affects safe travel qualifies for a free date transfer or full refund.
Use the Enquire & Book Now button, call us on 0409 661 342, or email contact@cooeetours.com.au. Full payment is required at booking for scheduled small-group tours; private tours are secured with a deposit. Free cancellation up to 48 hours before departure. Brisbane-based and family owned, Cooee Tours has been operating East Coast Australia tours since 1974.
Every week someone rings us with the same excellent question: "we've got one day — where should we go?" The honest answer depends on three things: how far you'll happily travel, how serious your group is about wine, and what else you want from the day besides tasting.
If travel time matters most, Sirromet at Mount Cotton wins on distance — around forty minutes from the CBD for a full winery experience with a behind-the-scenes tour and restaurant lunch. If variety matters most, Mount Tamborine stacks cellar doors, a distillery, cheese rooms and the Gallery Walk village into a single mountain hour from town — the reason it anchors our Mt Tamborine wine tours. If wine quality is the point, the Granite Belt is Queensland's answer: 850-metre altitude, cool-climate structure and the state's most awarded estates, worth every minute of the longer run covered on our Stanthorpe wine tours. And if you've done all that before, the Scenic Rim's heritage cellar doors and lavender-field vineyard are the connoisseur's second lap.
Mixed group with mixed motives? Tamborine. It is the region most likely to leave everyone happy, which after fifty years of watching groups come home is the highest praise we can offer a wine destination.
Queensland wine surprises people twice: first that it exists, then that it's good. The state's wine story starts in the 1860s, when the first grapes went into the granite soils around what is now the Granite Belt. What makes the region work is altitude — vineyards from roughly 850 metres up the Great Dividing Range, giving cold nights, real winters and a climate closer to inland New South Wales than to the Queensland coast below. That diurnal swing is why Granite Belt reds have structure and the whites keep their acid.
The modern chapter is the alternative-varietal movement. Granite Belt growers leaned into Mediterranean grapes suited to the site — fiano, vermentino, sangiovese, tempranillo, saperavi — marketed under the region's "Strange Bird" banner for varieties rare in Australian vineyards. For visitors this is the best news possible: cellar doors here pour things you have genuinely never tried, made by the people who grew them.
Closer to Brisbane, most Tamborine and hinterland cellar doors work with Granite Belt fruit — the mountain's rainforest climate is better at growing tourism than grapes, with a couple of honourable exceptions making wine on the mountain itself. Knowing that changes nothing about how enjoyable the day is; it just means the serious bottle-hunters eventually make the pilgrimage south to Stanthorpe, usually with us driving.
A wine tour lives or dies at lunch. Ours are built around long, seated meals at vineyard restaurants and hinterland kitchens — menus designed to flatter what's in your glass, with local producers doing the heavy lifting: mountain-made cheese from Tamborine's fromagerie, Scenic Rim beef and camel-dairy curiosities, Granite Belt apples, stone fruit and berries in season. Grazing boards appear mid-morning at cellar doors on most itineraries, because tasting on an empty stomach is a rookie error we refuse to let guests make.
Dietary requirements are handled properly — vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, halal and allergy needs communicated to venues in advance, not improvised at the table. Note dietaries at booking and the kitchen will be ready for you.
South East Queensland is a rare all-season wine destination. Autumn brings vintage — harvest in the rows and the Granite Belt in full colour. Winter is fireside season: crisp days, mulled offerings at the cellar doors, and the possibility of snow flurries around Stanthorpe, a genuine Queensland novelty. Spring means new releases, blossom and lavender. Summer sends smart tasters uphill, where Tamborine and the Granite Belt sit cooler than the sweltering coast and a shaded vineyard lunch is close to perfect.
The practical calendar: weekends book out first everywhere, school holidays lift the mountain's family traffic, and midweek days are the connoisseur's secret — quieter rooms, unhurried pours, more time with the winemakers. If your dates are flexible, ask us which departure will be the calm one.
The format flexes to the occasion. Celebrations gravitate to private charters where the group sets the playlist and the pace — hens groups have their own well-oiled format on our hens party wine tours. Corporate groups take Sirromet's efficiency or a full-coach Tamborine day with invoicing, name-badged pickups and a guaranteed finish time. Couples and small groups fill our scheduled small-group departures. And travellers watching the budget get the same real cellar doors at a sharper price through our value wine tours from Brisbane — efficiency shared, standards intact.
Coast-based? The hinterland runs just as well from the other side — see our Gold Coast wine tours for departures from Surfers Paradise, Broadbeach and the coastal strip.