margaritas and Bloody Marys made with
mezcal flow. It’s one of those delightful
places that’s obviously the result of a
bunch of oddball friends saying, “What if
we made a clubhouse stuffed with every-
thing we love and called it a restaurant?”
You’ll never want to leave.
That kind of quirky, personality-driven
business is taken to further extremes at
the d’Arenberg Cube (darenberg.com
.au), located in McLaren Vale, about a 45-minute drive south of
Adelaide. Rising out of the middle of a Mourvèdre vineyard, the
Cube is the brainchild of Chester Osborn, the fourth-generation
chief winemaker. The five-story concrete, steel, and glass struc-
ture is part tasting room, part high-end restaurant, part gallery,
and 100% hallucinogenic fun house. The degustation lunch,
served in a kaleidoscopic dining room, carries on the theme,
with 3D-printed dishes and a boundary-testing dessert of white
powder and a rolled-up bill.
A 30-minute plane ride from the Adelaide airport takes you
to Kangaroo Island, a magical 1,701-square-mile island that
was hit by the bushfires earlier this year. Long a destination
for wildlife-loving travelers, it is also home to one of Australia’s
best gin distilleries, Kangaroo Island Spirits (kispirits.com.au).
Although its most famous resort—the Southern Ocean Lodge—
was destroyed by fire, there are still many wonderful places to
stay. Most of its wildlife attractions are still accessible, offering
visitors a close-up view of sea lions, kangaroos, and koalas.
Cute marsupials, world-class wine, and some of Australia’s
best dining, all within easy access of the city—now that’s a pretty
seductive argument for making Adelaide your primary destina-
tion Down Under.94 MAY 2020
(penfolds.com) speaks to the former category and
is a must-visit for collectors of legacy prestige labels,
as well as for its two restaurants. Further up into
the Adelaide Hills, there is a strong and gloriously
freewheeling community of winemakers dedicated
to low-intervention wines.
But perhaps the most exciting wines are the
ones that walk the middle road between these
two extremes. Ngeringa wines (ngeringa.com) are
made biodynamically in the Adelaide Hills; they
are inspired by European wines and are beautifully
restrained. Their single-vineyard Ngeringa Summit
Chardonnay, with its bright stone fruit and subtle
oak (thanks to 20% new French oak barrels), would
stump the best sommelier during a blind tasting.
Another winemaker redefining the region’s style
is Taras Ochota, who makes elegant, low-alcohol
wines that defy Australia’s bold and brash reputa-
tion. A former musician and consulting winemaker
in Europe, Ochota names his wines (ochotabarrels
.com) after bands or songs or lyrics he loves, includ-
ing a Grenache from McLaren Vale named after the
legendary Washington, D.C., punk band Fugazi.
Ochota extends this naming style to the restaurant
he co-owns in Uraidla, a tiny town in the Adelaide
Hills. Lost in A Forest (lostinaforest.com.au), named
after “A Forest” by The Cure, is housed in an old
church. With its interior wall mural of climbing
vines, the restaurant has the feel of a tree house,
albeit one with a large hand-built pizza oven in the
back. Rock and roll blares, blistered pizzas topped
with chile and honey crowd the tables, and strongabov e: Stay in the
Cadole Avalon in a
vineyard in McLar-
en Vale. opposite,
from top: The bed-
room at Oceanview
Eco Villas on Kan-
garoo Island; Cape
du Couedic on the
island’s southern tipPHOTOGRAPHY: SAM NOONAN; (OPPOSITE FROM TOP) HEIDI WHO, BRETT STEVENS. MAP: WINSLOW TAFT
0520_FT_Adelaide_Australia.indd 94 FINAL 3/17/20 3:04 PM