Wines

To be a wine drinker you've got to have value for money and if you're buying a bottle of wine for $400 it has to be value for money and that's it. But there's no point coming in off the street and ordering a $100 bottle of wine when you don't know what a good $20 wine tastes like. You want it to go with the food, you want to develop an encyclopaedia of tastes in your mouth and your memory.

That doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of money here to get value. You can call in for a drink, just have a good glass of wine off our list.

The other thing is I try to support as many local growers as I can.

To be recognized as a great wine it has to be representative of the variety, it has to be representative of the region. To this day I am yet to find a quality Cabernet Sauvignon from this area. There's nice ones, but you've got to go to the Coonawarra for value for money.

Every vintage is different. The grower will say 'it's what the grapes gave me this year, I'm not going to irrigate them, I'm not going to put pesticides on them, that's what's provided to me this year', and to me that's crucial.