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Sydney’s Cirrus Dining has Australia’s best wine list
Barangaroo waterfront restaurant Cirrus Dining has been crowned Australia’s Wine List of the Year at the awards’ 30th anniversary ceremony at the Ovolo Hotel in Woolloomooloo.
The venue also won Best Wine List NSW and Australia’s Best Restaurant Wine List – City.
The award is a nod to the exceptional work sommeliers Nick Hildebrandt and Polly Mackarel do in seeking out rare cases of wine from a small Champagne producer or an impossible-to-get Burgundy red.
Seafood restaurant Cirrus Dining is part of the Bentley Restaurant Group, which also owns vegan restaurant Yellow in Potts Point and contemporary French bistro Monopole.
Hildebrandt is part-owner of Bentley and brought Mackarel to Cirrus four years ago.
Between them, they have expanded the wine list to boast more than 1000 wines and trained staff to help diners navigate the list.
“Our wine lists always have a lot of depth,” Hildebrandt says.
“Wine lovers come to our restaurants and that’s one of the selling points, that is one of the things we have a reputation for and we invest heavily in wine.”
It’s not the first wine win for Bentley Group, which won the Wine List of the Year for Bentley Restaurant and Bar in 2015.
Bentley Group restaurants have, over the years, built large inventories of wine valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Hildebrandt sees these as major assets.
“We have a cellaring program, we buy wine and if it goes up in value we see it as an asset, not a liability. During the pandemic the price of wine and the price of ‘cult’ or collectors’ wine, and hard-to-get wine, has gone up tremendously. Burgundy and Rhone Valley, they have all gone up, because of inflation and demand.”
The wine list at Cirrus complements its seafood offering.
Mackarel’s favourites include highly collectable and rare champagnes, such as Domaine Jacques Selosse.
“All of his wines are about $1000 on the wine list and it is a bit like a ‘bucket list’ for wine lovers who have to have drunk a bottle of Jacques Selosse if you’re are serious about wine,” Hildebrandt says.
Cirrus beat out Merivale’s Mr Wong in Sydney and Andrew McConnell’s Gimlet at Cavendish House in Melbourne.
Bistecca (NSW) took out Australia’s best listing of Italian wines, Society won Australia’s best listing of French wines, while Sarino’s wqs deemed to have Australia’s best cocktail list. Australia’s best listing of US wines went to SK Steak & Oyster.
Jonathan Jackson, 27th September 2023
