Sidewood Estate is the ideal place to cultivate a burgeoning pinot noir obsession, and the restaurant’s legendary matching duck dishes show the kitchen is perfectly in tune with the wine.
Some people just seem to have double-dipped when nature was dishing out energy and vision. Owen and Cassandra Inglis are two such people. The duo was living in Hong Kong, running their private business with 10,000 employees, when they started to look for a piece of the Adelaide Hills that could provide space for their two great loves: horses and wine. Not surprisingly, the sideline became a rapid success, with their Sidewood wines garnering acclaim at home and abroad.
When it came time to create a place where people could come and enjoy the wines the way they should be enjoyed, a simple cellar door just wasn’t going to cut it. The Inglises built a pleasure dome, a striking space dedicated to great wine, great food, great art and great times. It has become the Adelaide Hills destination for locals and visitors alike, all of them hungry for a taste of Sidewood style.
Anyone who has eaten well in the Adelaide Hills over the years will know the name Ali Seedsman. While her CV features cornerstones of Australian cuisine like Sydney’s MG Garage, Bathers Pavilion and Bayswater Brasserie, as well as local institutions The Universal Wine Bar and Magill Estate, Ali’s Hills ventures have been lower in profile but just as high in quality. For many years she ran a casual cafe and lunch spot with her partner, the perpetually smiling Rusty Marchant, pulling in hungry winemakers and local food lovers with cooking built on well-honed technique and innate understanding of flavour.
When Owen and Cassandra approached Ali and Rusty to manage the restaurant side of Sidewood, it was a clear signal to all those who knew that this was going to be done right. Those same basic principles – technique, produce, flavour – were reinforced and elevated at Sidewood, resulting in some of the best food found anywhere in the country.
The idea that any venue has something for everyone is nonsense, but Sidewood gets a lot closer than most. While the kitchen pumps out some of the finest food in the Adelaide Hills, the cellar door in the old apple shed at the front of the property takes curious palates through tutored tastings, detailed masterclasses on the art of wine tasting and the skills to perfect sabrage.
Out in the expansive grounds, the beautiful people lounge around in luxurious daybeds with glass in hand, while the more active among them get competitive on the petanque pitches. There’s even a cleverly conceived kids’ play area for those who still hold out hope that ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is a valid approach to parenting.
