National Wine Centre – top place for lunch and wine in Adelaide

You may have thought I disappeared and forgot the last of my few days in lovely Australia! I came back to Ireland a couple of weeks ago and immediately started a new job, so my attention has been there! Now that I know how my week is working, I have a few more posts about Adelaide to share.

First in the wrap-up list is Adelaide’s National Wine Centre!

I think this building has a range of functions – housing representative bodies and influencers, but I wanted to come here as it has a reputation for good food and for wine tasting without having to visit the vineyards or cellar doors.

No expense has been spent (!) on the exterior decoration but there is a sort of architectural charm.

Inside is like a giant convention centre and the cafe/wine tasting area is in a cathedral-shaped void in the centre of the building.

I decided to have something to eat and try a few wines. You get a card, which you use to choose very small tasting amounts (25ml), a decent slurp (75ml) or a full glass (150ml). As the photo says there were 120 wines. Now I didn’t try ALL of them!

They are arranged in a row from white to rose to light reds and I do go along and get little taster sizes of a typical white, rose and light red and got a full glass of a local Shiraz (for which the areas around Adelaide like McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley are famed.

Water was served in a charming thick bottle.

Oh dear, what a lot of bread! I do love olive oil and balsamic for dipping bread into, though!

Mmm, peppery goodness!

My lunch was a corn and wild rice concoction with ‘roast chicken’ on top. That skin looks flabby and horrible (and it was) – I think it should have been crisped up at some stage of the cooking – but the chicken was tender and delicious underneath.

After that hefty meal and a couple of glasses of wine, I fancied a nap but walked out into the Centre garden, which backed on to a local park – I love these signs showing distances to other wine regions.