Jackalope Hotel

Off Balnarring Road at Merricks North, on the Mornington Peninsula south-east of Melbourne, a dark building sits among rows of vines, and a tall sculpture of a horned hare stands at the entrance. Jackalope opened here in 2017 on the Willow Creek vineyard. It was the first hotel of the Melbourne hotelier Louis Li, and it set out to show that a country wine region could carry a design hotel as bold as anything in the city.

History

Li built the hotel around an existing vineyard and cellar door rather than starting from bare land, keeping the estate's wine at the heart of the project. The name comes from the jackalope of American folklore, a hare with the horns of an antelope, a creature popularised by taxidermists in Wyoming in the 1930s. Li took it as an emblem of things made by joining unlike parts, here winemaking, contemporary art and hospitality. The hotel opened in 2017 with 46 rooms and two restaurants and drew attention well beyond Victoria for its design. Li has since opened further hotels in Melbourne under his own group.

Architecture and design

The palette is dark, with black walls and surfaces set against the bright green of the vines in summer and their bare canes in winter. The jackalope sculpture, several metres tall, is the first thing guests see. Inside, the public spaces are theatrical, with deliberate lighting and contemporary art commissioned for the building.

The 30-metre infinity pool is lined in black and points out towards the vineyard, so that a swimmer at the far end sees only water and vines. It is the image most often used to describe the hotel.

Rooms and suites

The 46 rooms look over the vines or across the surrounding countryside. They follow the dark scheme of the public areas, with large beds, deep soaking baths and wide windows. Bathrooms are given real space, and in many rooms the bath faces the view.

Dining

Doot Doot Doot is the hotel's fine-dining restaurant, a room whose ceiling is hung with a great many small glass light globes. It serves a set menu built around produce from the peninsula, its farms and the waters of Port Phillip and Western Port, with wines from the estate and the region.

Rare Hare, in the building that houses the Willow Creek cellar door, is the more relaxed of the two, a wine bar and restaurant with views over the vines. It is open to visitors who are not staying, as is the cellar door, and on weekends it draws a crowd from Melbourne.

Location

Merricks North lies in the hills between Red Hill and the shore of Western Port, at the centre of the peninsula's wine country. The region has a cool, maritime climate and is best known for pinot noir and chardonnay, with dozens of cellar doors within a short drive. The peninsula is narrow, so the calm bay beaches of Port Phillip and the surf beaches of the Bass Strait coast are both within easy reach, and the Peninsula Hot Springs at Fingal draw visitors to their geothermal bathing pools all year round. Arthurs Seat, the highest point on the peninsula, looks over the whole of Port Phillip.

Central Melbourne is about an hour and a quarter by car, and Melbourne Airport at Tullamarine about an hour and a half. There is no railway to the hotel, and most guests drive. As a luxury hotel on the Mornington Peninsula, Jackalope broke with the country houses and bed and breakfasts that had long defined the area, and much of the region's newer hospitality has followed its lead in taking design seriously.