Winery Restaurants

Times have indeed changed since a trip to the vineyards meant a packed lunch or tasting wine on an empty stomach. Back when cellar doors were literally just that, perhaps equipped with a tasting bench, dirt floor and an old refrigerator, you would no more think of dining at a winery than you would ask them to sell you a hi-fi. Which didn’t make a lot of sense, given the obvious association between wine and food.

Think of all the reasons why there should be more winery restaurants. Once inside, you’re a captive audience. If you enjoy the experience, there’s no chance you will keep it to yourself. You’re a convert for life, a living, breathing word-of-mouth marketing tool. If you accept a long-held view of mine that wine always tastes better when you taste it where it was made – often in earthy, atmospheric surrounds, with a salt-of-the-earth winemaker and while you’re so full of the milk of human warmth and kindness you’re likely to explode – imagine how good it is to taste wine grown and made on the property which also created the food you’re enjoying it with? Could wine ever have a better showcase?

Winery restaurants offer a special, rare opportunity for wine producers to enjoy their wares the way they think they should be. It’s sometimes the nearest thing to being invited to their own dining table.

The winery restaurants which do it best don’t lose sight of that. They are structured to provide an experience as special with wine as they do with food. Winery restaurants are not simply restaurants relocated from the city rat-race. Their patrons are entitled to a special wine experience. It might be an opportunity to taste wines unavailable elsewhere with people able to explain and describe them. It might simply be atmospheric, whether inside an historic winery space or overlooking the owner’s vineyard. Most importantly, their patrons should never be able to forget where they are.

Australia boasts several outstanding winery restaurants. Here are some of the best, with the reasons why you should visit them sometime soon.


The Magill Estate Restaurant, Adelaide

78 Penfold Rd, Magill, SA, 5072.
Tel: 08 8301 5551

It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that Australia’s largest winemaker has raised the bar on the high-jump in the winery restaurant stakes. The Magill Estate Restaurant is the showpiece of a brilliant restoration, yet to be fully completed, of the working, functional Magill winery, home of the Magill Estate Shiraz.

The restaurant is a spectacular new construction which places the diner just above old vine level, with a distant view of central Adelaide beyond. Huge panes of glass are raised in warmer months, so despite the five-star environs you might as well be in the vineyard itself. Large blinds are raised in keeping with the sun’s movements so glare and direct sunlight are minimised. You could live there.

Penfolds offer one of Australia’s greatest wine and food experiences at Magill Estate. The wine list, naturally 100 Penfolds, presents a cross-section of the company’s winemaking, from mature vintages of lesser lights like Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz to a selection of Grange dating back to 1973. Wines are priced accessibly, so whatever your budget – given that you’re in a serious restaurant – you will drink well anywhere between $30 for an Old Vine Mourvedre Grenache Shiraz 1992 to $200 for the soft, easy-drinking 1982 Grange.

Wine highlights at Magill Estate include a remarkable range of Penfolds’ Special Bin reds, including the unbelievable 1962 Bin 60A for $550, excellent coverage of Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon back to 1978, Magill Estate reds back to 1983 and a diverse selection of wine by the glass which includes the 1992 Trial Bin 92A Chardonnay $10, 1984 Grange $40 and 1988 Magill Estate $10.

Magill Estate’s classic modern cuisine amply lives up to the expectations created by its wine list. With three courses costing around $50 total, it is very reasonable by east coast standards.

Amberley Estate, Margaret River

Thornton Rd, Yallingup, WA, 6282.
Tel: 097 55 2288

Amberley Estate is found in one of the most scenic sites in one of the most picturesque of Australian wine regions, the Margaret River. The restaurant follows an inside-out theme, with large areas of decking and verandah encircled by gardens and vine-covered hills behind. Dining is informal and the menu honestly presented and flavoursome, with a gamey, rustic seasonal feel.

From the wine perspective, Amberley views its list as an extension of the cellar door, so all wines available are from the current release. The restaurant, always a popular venue, has just doubled its size. There are few better places to spend a sunny afternoon.

Petaluma’s Bridgewater Mill, Adelaide Hills

Old Mount Barker Rd, Bridgewater, SA, 5155
Tel: 08 8339 3422

The Bridgewater Mill is home to Petaluma’s sparkling wine operations, cellar door and one of the best winery restaurants around. Originally opened as the Petaluma Restaurant, it now runs at a less formal pace, offering imaginative cuisine in a variety of dining spaces from the Petaluma Room, upstairs in the terraced interior of the old mill itself and, weather permitting, outside on wooden decking.

The wine selection includes the sparkling Croser 1992 and the Bridgewater Mill Sparkling Riesling which were given their bubbles on-site at Bridgewater Mill, plus a range of current Petaluma, Bridgewater Mill and Sharefarmers labels available by glass and by bottle. Most interesting and affordable are the older bottles, which presently include the 1989 Bridgewater Mill Riesling $25, the 1988 Petaluma Chardonnay $37, the 1987 Petaluma Riesling $30 and the 1987 Petaluma Coonawarra red $41.50.

De Bortoli Vineyard, Yarra Valley

Pinnacle Lane, Dixon’s Creek, Victoria, 3775.
Tel: 059 65 2271

One of the Yarra Valley’s most important landmarks, the De Bortoli winery is also host to a large, bustling restaurant with a modern Italian style and flavour. A popular tourist destination, it is equally sought after as a Sunday refuge for escaping Melburnians.

The restaurant’s contemporary Italian cuisine can be matched with a variety of wines from De Bortoli and a cross-section from other Yarra valley producers, with the interesting and worthwhile inclusion of the Cope-Williams sparkling wine and a fine Gippsland cabernet blend simply named The McAlister. The list also features several back vintages of De Bortoli Yarra Valley Shiraz.

Leeuwin Estate, Margaret River

Stevens Rd, Witchcliffe, WA, 6286
Tel: 097 57 6253

A very stylish, yet informal dining room adjacent to the cellar door of this most important of Australian wineries, the Leeuwin Estate restaurant is a first-class showcase for Margaret River produce and its own stellar wines.

Leeuwin Estate offers its diners a genuine wine experience, a special list of wines divided into ‘Wine Flights’, which provide an opportunity to enjoy a range of older vintages or to sample a range of varieties with excellent food. Most of these older museum vintages are in short supply and are no longer available elsewhere.

The four ‘flights’, each of which cost $15 for four or five 50 ml glasses, present a range of old releases, a group of mixed mature whites, a bracket of chardonnays and a group of cabernet sauvignon vintages. You could hardly expect better value from a winery of Leeuwin’s deserved international status.

Roberts at Pepper Tree, Hunter Valley

Halls Rd, Pokolbin, NSW, 2320
Tel: 049 98 7330

Found in an airy, homestead-styled dining room next to the very twee Pepper Tree Cottage once occupied by Hunter vigneron Murray Robson, Roberts is certainly one of the best restaurants in NSW; probably the best outside metropolitan Sydney. Located adjacent to the Pepper Tree Winery, which has a different ownership to the restaurant, its unrivalled quality in the Hunter makes it a mandatory inclusion in this listing.

Chef/owner Robert Molines maintains an ever-changing fixed price menu of such imagination and quality that the exhaustive wine list is positively easy to choose from by comparison. Something of a library of the best in Hunter wine, with several older vintages on offer, Roberts’ wine list also features some classics from other regions. The current vintages of Pepper Tree wines are naturally also available.


Warrenmang Vineyard Resort, Pyrenees

Mountain Creek Rd, Moonambel, Victoria, 3478
Tel: 054 67 2233

Given its boutique size and flavour, Warrenmang is almost impossible to describe in a single sentence. It is a re-emerging brand of premium Victorian wine. It is possibly Victoria’s best country restaurant. It is a very private weekend getaway whose chalet-style rooms are patronised by those in the know from all Australian states. It is a boutique conference retreat overlooking set amid some of the most attractive native and viticultural Australian landscapes.

Warrenmang’s restaurant accurately reflects the style and attention to detail of its founder, Luigi Bazzani. Its menu regularly features local yabbies, berries, cheese, rabbit and trout, while its chef, Dean Matthews, deliberately fashions his main dishes to accompany the broad range of sumptuous regional red wines featured on the wine list. Most of the local wineries are well represented, while the reserve list offers a remarkable range of cellared local classics from the neighbouring Taltarni, Redbank, Dalwhinnie, Mount Avoca and Warrenmang itself.

Prices are very accessible, although only the most politically aware would meet the $175 required for a magnum of Premier Jeff Kennett’s 1992 Anniversary Release. Please login to post comment