Wine group plans $15m hotel complex

The Kamberra Wine Company is planning a $15 million boutique development comprising a hotel, restaurant, pub and mini-brewery for land adjoining its Lyneham headquarters.

Its owners, the Elvin Group, has also stayed true to its promise to keep the winery operating by re-launching next week its Meeting Place label, which has been off shelves for almost three years after the shock departure of former owners, the BRL Hardy Group.

Kamberra is also the main sponsor of Sunday's Black Opal Stakes and sole supplier of wine to Thoroughbred Park as it moves to reposition itself in the market following Hardy's withdrawal in 2006.

The Elvin Group, a homegrown Canberra construction company branching into hospitality, was started by Tom Elvin and is now run by his sons, Craig and Vic. The company bought Kamberra in 2007. Craig Elvin said the planned upmarket hotel and pub development was an attempt to create in the Canberra region some of the wine tourism synonymous with Margaret River or the Hunter Valley.

''There's no reason we can't,'' he said.

''We are very confident. Canberra is a great place to be at the moment, not only in Australia, but the world.''

Mr Elvin said Canberra's wines were becoming well-known, but infrastructure in the region to support wine tourism was ''under-developed''.

Kamberra Wine Company function centre manager Will Penny said the Lyneham development included a 120-room four-star hotel, pub and steakhouse, tourist centre and wine-tasting area on vacant land owned by the Elvin Group south of the current winery and function centre.

For more on this story, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.