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Dinner in Melbourne, at a television chef’s restaurant: the drinking is good, but the prices are steep ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Winter 2010

Neil Perry is everywhere Down Under right now. Take a Qantas flight and his name’s all over the menu. Switch on the television and he’s competing in the Australian version of “Iron Chefs”. Enter a bookshop and his latest tome, “Balance & Harmony”, is stacked on a table. Open a weekend supplement and there he is, a pony-tailed interviewee spread across two adulatory pages.

Perry is a celebrity chef all right, but he’s an exceptional cook and restaurateur too. His Rockpool empire includes three establishments in Sydney, two (soon to be three) in Melbourne and another on the way in Perth. Even Perry can’t be in two places at the same time, but he does his best. If he’s absent, diners at the Rockpool Bar & Grill in Melbourne can watch him, via a live video link, in one of his Sydney kitchens.

High-quality, ethically sourced native ingredients are a fundamental part of Perry’s philosophy—on their way to the tables, diners walk past a Baconesque meat-locker full of dry-ageing beef. He is also a great believer in Australian wine. At least two of his restaurants have won awards for their wine lists and David Lawler, the head sommelier in Melbourne, is one of the leading wine waiters in the country.

The list here is certainly extensive, with more than 1,500 bins. Rockpool Melbourne has drawn on the famous, French-focused cellar of the collector and shareholder David Doyle, just as its Sydney counterparts do, but most of it is selected by Lawler, either from a local auction house, from retailers or direct from producers. “I like to keep the whole thing dynamic,” he says. Tellingly, more than half of the list is Australian.

Rockpool is essentially an upmarket Aussie steakhouse, so the majority of its customers eat meat. They often order what Lawler describes as the “biggest, oakiest wines” to go with it. “I like to fight the noble fight whenever possible,” he adds, “but I have to be aware of not slowing the cogs of service down. In big dining rooms, people tend to gravitate to what they know.” Only about a third of diners ask for wine advice, or choose to “enjoy the journey” as the restaurant’s menu would have it, which is a shame given the quality of this 55-page list.

European-wine lovers, of whom there are many in a city as cosmopolitan as Melbourne, are well looked after at Rockpool. The list is mostly divided by grape variety or wine style, rather than country or region of origin, but Alsace, Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Loire, the Rhône, Champagne, Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy and Portugal are all well represented. The spread of producers is excellent, especially in Burgundy and Piedmont, which are clearly Lawler’s twin passions.

I chose to drink Australian in honour of Perry’s support for local produce. By avoiding beef and choosing grilled quail starter followed by whiting, I gave myself a greater choice of potential wine matches. I settled on a toasty, deliciously mature Hunter Valley Semillon (the 1999 Meerea Park Alexander Munro at A$65, around £40) and a youthful, ethereal, cool-climate Pinot Noir (the 2008 Gembrook Hill Pinot Noir, Yarra Valley at A$95). Both were delicious and worked well with Perry’s subtler dishes.

If those prices sound high, you should see the rest of the list. The strength of the Aussie dollar makes them seem steep, but only partly. Many of the wines are just very expensive. This has a lot to do with Rockpool’s location, in the rather tacky Crown Casino Complex on the south bank of the Yarra. I suspect that the kind of people who eat here, wandering in from the gaming tables and the one-armed bandits, expect to pay high prices, whether it’s A$110 for a sirloin steak or A$13,500 for a 1978 DRC Romanée-Conti. Otherwise, they’d feel slightly short-changed.

The mark-ups mean that you’ll struggle to find a bottle here for less than A$50. The sole alternative is to order by the glass (the 22-wine selection is eclectic and well-chosen) because there are only six half-bottles under A$50, too. Charging A$90 (£56) for 37.5cl of 2008 Alain Graillot Crozes-Hermitage, a wine that retails at £16.50 in Britain for a full bottle, is ludicrous. But maybe that’s the point. If you want to eat and drink at Rockpool, you have to be prepared to pay for the experience. Or win a hand of poker before you sit down.

Rockpool Bar & Grill Crown Complex, Southbank, Victoria 3006; +61 3 8648 1900

IN THE BIN
Number of wines   1,500
By the glass   22
Under A$50   33
Over A$100   856
Best value   1999 Meerea Park, Alexander Munro Semillon, Hunter Valley (A$65)
Worst value Too many to choose from, alas
Gluggability •••••
Expense account adjuster * •••••
Australian Chardonnay index** 2.43