What we do
For each wine region we keep a first-party directory of cellar doors with the details that determine a visit: opening days, tasting fees, the experiences on offer, and whether you can walk, drive, or take a shuttle between them. The planner then orders your chosen wineries into a route that respects when they are open.
Independent by design
We build the directory from our own research and verification, not from another platform. No winery pays to be here, and none can pay to move up the page or change how a place reads. We take no affiliate commissions, no sponsorship, and no ads. When we are unsure about a detail, we say so.
Where the data comes from
Facts such as hours and fees are curated and checked against each winery's own information. Reviews come from visitors who have been, and we don't copy ratings across from other platforms. Our data and licensing page explains the approach in full.
How we check a venue
Every record starts from the venue's own published information and is cross-checked against at least one independent source. Where sources disagree, and on opening hours they disagree constantly, we do not average them or pick the most convenient. We mark the record as needing verification and, where it matters enough, we ring the cellar door.
That is why you will occasionally see a venue listed without opening times rather than with plausible ones. A guessed opening hour sends a real person on a two-hour drive to a locked gate, and no amount of tidy-looking data is worth that. If we cannot stand behind a fact, we would rather show a gap.
Who writes this
I'm David. I live in Sydney, and I've driven up to the Hunter twice a year for about five years, usually with my partner and a few friends. I go looking for the smaller cellar doors off the main roads, the ones making good wine without the crowds. We always drive home with more wine than we meant to buy.
I built this to sort out my own trips. I used to lay each one out on a spreadsheet, line up seven cellar doors when four was the sensible number, then rebuild it every time a winery changed its hours or a booking fell through. I never found anywhere new through it, and I couldn't easily share it with the people coming along.
What I really wanted was to see which cellar doors sit close enough together to keep the taxi fares down between them. So I built Cellar Door Days. I don't make a cent from it, and I still use it every time I go up.
Tell us when we are wrong
Cellar doors change their hours, their fees and sometimes their existence, and they rarely tell anyone. If you have been somewhere and found us out of date, please let us know. Corrections from people who have just walked out of the place are the single most useful thing we receive.