Chiltern's 1867 grapevine at the old Star Hotel

The grapevines are in leaf again around the district. Out towards Rutherglen the rows have gone green, and in town the old vines over back verandas and sheds are filling out.

One vine in Chiltern has been doing this for longer than most. It grows in the courtyard of the old Star Hotel, on the corner of Main and Conness streets, and it was planted in 1867.

Where the two miners' tracks met

The corner is older than the vine. The Sydney Morning Herald's walking guide to Chiltern explains that the town grew up around two miners' tracks after the Indigo gold lead was announced in 1858. One ran beside the New Ballarat lead and is now Conness Street, named after John Conness, the man who first found gold here. The other ran from Beechworth out to the Indigo lead and became Main Street.

The first Star Hotel went up where the two crossed, in 1859. A fire destroyed it, and the building on the corner today is the one put up in its place in 1866. The vine went into the courtyard the following year.

Later the pub was known as the Grapevine Hotel, and that is the name a lot of travel writing about the town still uses for it.

How big the Chiltern grapevine really is

The town has never been shy about the vine's size. The Herald's guide gives it a trunk of 1.84 metres and a single branch 12 metres long, and says it bore two and a half tonnes of grapes in 1936. When the Border Mail called in to see it in 2016, the paper's headline named it the largest grapevine in Australia. Clare Reeves, who was running The Vine eatery in the old hotel at the time, went a little further.

Whether it holds the title is harder to say. The writer of Bike Review's Bear Tracks column went looking for whoever keeps the official register of grapevines, found nobody, and pointed out that the vine at Hampton Court in England is more than twice the size. That one was set in its present spot in 1768 under the direction of Capability Brown, and Wikipedia's entry on old vines says it is thought to be the largest in the world.

Grapes in February

The Border Mail reported that the vine has never been watered or fertilised, and still bears fruit every February or March. Reeves put that down to natural underground springs keeping it topped up. Shayne Vogel, who ran The Vine alongside her, tried the grapes for the paper and said they were tasty despite the pips.

So the fruit is a long way off yet. For now it is the leaves, and the shade they will give the courtyard through the summer.

We are on Conness Street too, a short walk from the corner, and the ovens are going well before we open at seven. Pick up a pie on your way past and have a look at the building where the vine has spent the last 159 years.