Hellenic Republic, Noma, Porteno, Rosetta and other diners offering specialist wine
You can’t order sushi at a French bistro. So why do diners expect wine lists to be all things to all people?
There’s no Australian wine to be had at Hellenic Republic restaurant in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick, and restaurant manager Chris Glover is entirely unapologetic.
“We’re a Greek restaurant,” he says. “So we have 100 per cent Greek wines on the list. Having wines from anywhere else (would be) like putting spaghetti bolognese on the menu. It wouldn’t feel right.”
Hellenic Republic is not the only restaurant in Australia taking such an intensely focused approach to its wine offering. More and more lists are being compiled along an exclusive theme, from the all-Italian wine offering at Sydney’s Via Alta to the northern-Italian-only list at Melbourne’s Merchant; from the all-Australian drinks list (including spirits) at the new Muse wine bar and restaurant in Canberra’s East Hotel to the all-West Australian list (plus Japanese sake and spirits) at Perth’s Apple Daily Eating House.
This approach makes so much sense when you think about it. We are completely comfortable with specialisation on restaurant menus: we don’t expect to find sushi in a French bistro any more than we expect to find tarte tatin in an izakaya. So why should we expect wine lists to be all things to all people, offering an obligatory range of French champagnes, Kiwi sav blanc, Barossa shiraz and so on? Why not go all Italian in a pizza joint or all Greek in Greek restaurant?
Yes, it can make the sommelier’s life a lot harder — but it can be more rewarding in the end, particularly for the diner and drinker.
When Hellenic Republic opened five years ago, says Glover, nobody had heard of Greek wines and there used to be a lot of pushback from customers, bewildered by the unusual names and indecipherable labels.
“But we’re pretty stubborn at this end of town,” he says. “And we found that training is the key. We have regular serious mandatory wine training sessions for the staff; we get the chefs to send out food; we talk wine for two or three hours. Yes, the customers have no choice but to drink Greek wine, but the idea is to make them comfortable with that — which means the staff need to have the confidence to say, ‘OK, if you like pinot grigio, why not try this moschofilero?’ ”
Mads Kleppe, head sommelier at world-famous Copenhagen restaurant Noma, admits he made his job difficult by refusing to compromise on his single-minded vision when choosing the wines for the restaurant’s 10-week pop-up stint in Sydney. “I’m very picky about the wines I list,” he says. “First, as far as possible, they must be grown in a sound way, without synthetic chemicals. For me this is most important. They must be from nice people; people I have met and enjoy drinking wine with. And they must be made in a non-intervention way, not fined (clarified) or filtered, preferably with no sulphur (dioxide, added as a preservative). Wines made this way have a different tension, a different texture, a different energy.”
The wines Kleppe has chosen for the pairing menu — by-the-glass offerings matching specific dishes — are all white (or orange: made from white grapes fermented on skins) and “pet nats” (sparkling wines that finish fermentation in the bottle), all produced according to Kleppe’s strict criteria.
“What we’re cooking at Noma is mostly the amazing Australian seafood and fruits and vegetables,” he says. “This called for a wide variety of white wines in all shapes and colours, which means I had to find enough wine to cover the 10 weeks we are open: most of it white, all of it natural. It hasn’t been easy.”
The single theme was a little easier for co-owners Dan Sanderson and Paul Eldon to stick to at the new Muse wine bar in Canberra: apart from one soft drink, everything on the list is Australian.
“Occasionally we have people in who are furious because they can’t get New Zealand sauvignon blanc,” says Sanderson. “But not many. The theory is that as we’re in the nation’s capital we should showcase the variety of what’s on offer from around the country.”
Thanks to a revolution among local booze producers — from a growing number of winemakers exploring unusual grape varieties and adventurous wine styles to a host of new craft brewers and distillers — it is becoming easier to compile creative, focused Australian-only wine lists such as the one at Muse without compromising the quality of the customer’s drinking experience. Indeed, this appears to be the growth area for single-theme wine programs.
When husband-and-wife restaurateurs Ryan and Kirstyn Sessions took over the Stag in the southwest Victorian town of Port Fairy last year, they decided that everything they brought into the restaurant should be produced in Australia — from the indigenous ingredients that chef Ryan has become known for to all the wines, spirits, beers and soft drinks.
“I was tired of going to Australian restaurants where the food is promoted as being regional, where they tell you proudly which ingredients were grown outside the back door, and then they match it with a chenin blanc from the Loire Valley,” Ryan says. “It doesn’t seem like it fits, somehow. We wanted to take that idea of local and regional, and really apply it properly to the wine.”
It’s a sentiment shared by Jean-Charles Mahe, French-born wine director of Perth’s Print Hall eating and drinking hub, which includes Apple Daily and its all-West Australian list. “As sommeliers we are happy to travel the world but sometimes we don’t look at what we’ve got around us,” Mahe says. “But WA is seven times bigger than my own country and is full of so much potential.
“I’m in love with the wines from Great Southern: the cool-climate syrah, riesling, the amazing pinot gris. And we want to make sure we are supporting WA winemakers to do new and interesting things … without us they would not be able to sell so much wine, and without them we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.”
Single-theme wine lists
Sydney
Bang Street Food — short list of all Portuguese wines | Balla — all Italian wines and Australian-grown Italian varieties | Noma — all natural wines | Nomad — all-Australian wine list | Porteno — only wines from South America, Spain
and the US | Via Alta — all-Italian wine list
Canberra
Muse — all-Australian list: wines, spirits, beers, aperitifs and so on (apart from a couple of
big-name multinational soft drinks)
Melbourne
Da Noi — all Italian wines (apart from one champagne) | The European — all European wines (apart from one Australian house red) | Hellenic Republic — all Greek wine, beer, spirits | Izakaya Den — sake, Japanese spirits and an all-Victorian wine list (apart from a couple of sparkling wines from Tasmania and Champagne) | Merchant — all northern Italian wines, plus Australian-grown northern Italian grape varieties | Rosetta — all Italian wines, plus Australian-grown Italian grape varieties | Taxi Kitchen — all Victorian wines (apart from a couple of French champagnes)
Port Fairy
The Stag — all-Australian list: wines, spirits, beers, everything
Perth
Apple Daily Eating House — all-West Australian wine list, plus sake and Japanese spirits | Print Hall — just launched a stand-alone, 40-page sparkling wine list