Stepping Up
The Age
Tuesday August 26, 2008
Sure, you can taste great wine at Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander's groovy cellar door and winery, but you can also drink boutique beer on tap or espresso from beans roasted in-house, buy bread and pastries baked in the wood-fired oven, or order cheese that's ripened in its maturing room. And yes, you can also sit down in the large dining area for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
On the multiple-options food and wine front, Giant Steps reigns supreme and that's why it wins the inaugural winery restaurant of the year award. When owners Phil and Allison Sexton launched the business in 2006, their vision was for a functional winery and cellar door, but the strikingly designed Giant Steps has turned out to be so much more than that. This new award honours those who implicitly understand wine and the enjoyment it brings to food. The latter is chef Jarrod Hudson's domain and he leads a small but dedicated team who can as easily prepare a thin-crust pizza as they can a crispy duck and watermelon salad, or a pot-roast chicken with risoni, silverbeet and olives. The menu is tantalising and so is the wine list. Alongside estate wines offered by the glass are some of the best from the region, plus inspirational benchmark wines from Australia, Europe and America. Phil Sexton and winemaker Steve Flamsteed say they created the list partly to incorporate "wines we'd like to drink", but also to help people get as excited about wine as they are. And that it does. -- JANE FAULKNER
© 2008 The Age