History

More than 30,000 bottles, 3700 different labels, and 50 years of collecting...

The origins of our famed cellar at the Royal Mail Hotel, Dunkeld predate the modern history of the hotel and its most recent iterations.

Great wine collections take time, love and attention to amass, and whilst the Royal Mail Hotel has been a food and wine destination for almost two decades, 20 years doesn’t allow for the graceful maturation of Australia’s greatest wine collection. The process of putting together Australia’s most famed wine list started well before any our now famous chefs arrived in Dunkeld.

In the late 1970s Allan and Maria Myers returned to Australia to live, and began a private collection of fine wine, predominantly the Bordeaux, Burgundy and the greatest Australians, that was 20 years later, to become the basis of the Royal Mail Hotel collection.

After purchasing the Royal Mail Hotel in the mid 1980s, Dunkeld Pastoral Co, undertook a modernisation of the main hotel compound upon assuming management of the venue in the mid 1990s. Most significantly for enophiles the modernisation of the hotel included the construction of a 20,000 case cellar and the transferral of select wines and vintages from the Myers’ personal collection.

Since the re-opening of the hotel post re-construction in 1997 the dedicated wine staff and sommeliers of the Royal Mail Hotel have maintained the Myers family vision of the country’s best wine collection by dedicating themselves to the acquisition of the finest wines and vintages from around the world.

Since the early 2000s, with a purpose built facility the scope of the cellar expanded. While maintaining the traditional collection of Bordeaux, Burgundy and Australian wines, the team continues to add the greatest wines of Italy, Spain, the Americas and every other relevant wine making region.