About Hart's Farm
Mornington Peninsula cider, olive oil, boutique farm stays and more.
Hart’s Farm, on Tucks Road, Shoreham, occupies 10 Hectares with Manton’s Creek flowing through.
It started its working (productive) life as a dairy, and the old, corrugated iron milking shed is still there, though now renovated and extended. When we bought the property in 1997, beef cattle were happily grazing on the fertile pastures. After trying our hand at continuing the tradition, first with Angus, then Dexters, we converted to growing olives.
In 2000, in one weekend, with the help of friends and family, we planted 800 baby olive trees. 200 more trees followed a year or so later. In 2010 a heritage apple and pear orchards were planted.
Hart’s Farm apple cider, produced from both heritage apples from our farm and more modern varieties from friends’ orchards in Red Hill is now available. Cider, Olive Oil, Cider Vinegar, Olives are available at the cellar door at Bittern Estate. Selected outlets and restaurants on the Mornington Peninsula and Melbourne also stock these products.
Our Ciders
We harvest the apples starting in late February with the later varieties in April. The apples are the crushed on site after each harvest using a continuous belt press & the resulting juice is pumped into stainless steel tanks.
The cider undergoes primary fermentation in stainless steel tanks & is then aged in French oak barrels followed by final blending and bottling with additional apple juice and yeast. This secondary bottle fermentation naturally carbonates the cider, with residual fruit sugars providing balance. Natural sediment (lees) forms in the bottles from the secondary yeast, which gives our ciders added complexity. When the bottled cider has reached the right amount of carbonation, we pasteurise the bottles in milk vats filled with heated water, followed by labelling and packing.
The flavour of the finished cider does vary slightly from year to year and batch to batch depending on available fruit and seasonal characteristics.
Our Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Our olive grove consists of over 1300 trees. Penny and Graeme planted the classic Tuscan varieties, Frantoio, Pendolino and Leccino (the Mornington Peninsula is a similar latitude to Tuscany). These trees make wonderful high polyphenol extra virgin olive oils and have won multiple awards.
Harts Farm 2015 Leccino Pendolino Blend won Silver Medal at Australian Olive Association competition in Robust section. Harts Farm 2016 Frantoio Leccino Pendolino Blend wins Bronze at Australian Olive Association competition in Robust section.