Your weekly taste of Australia’s best food, drinks and spirited discoveries

Welcome back to Uncorked & Forked.

This week we’re heading to Tasmania, where a new Tamar Valley cellar door and restaurant is about to open with vineyard views, serious food and some very good cool-climate wine.

We’re also pouring one of Halliday’s best reds in Australia, raising a glass to a 200-year-old Scottish distillery, discovering the Italian influence hiding in plain sight across our cities and ordering perhaps the strangest whisky cocktail we’ve encountered.

And because mango season is nearly here, somebody in Brisbane is about to pay an extraordinary amount of money for the first symbolic tray.

Let’s get into it.

MAIN COURSE

Small wonder: The new reason to plan a Tamar Valley wine escape

Tasmania doesn’t really need another reason to tempt food and wine lovers across Bass Strait. It’s getting one anyway.

Next Friday, September 18, Small Wonder opens its new cellar door and restaurant on the western ridge of the Tamar Valley, about 30 minutes from Launceston.

Designed by Kerry Hill Architects with Edwards + Simpson, the new venue sits alongside Small Wonder’s working winery and vineyard, bringing together tastings, restaurant lunches, a garden menu and winery tours.

The kitchen is led by Konstantin Putkin, Australian Professional Chef of the Year in 2022, whose CV includes Michelin-starred Galvin at Windows in London, the Hydro Majestic and Hobart’s Aura.

His menu will change with what’s available from Tasmanian farmers and providores, with a five-course lunch from Thursday to Sunday and a more relaxed garden menu earlier in the week.

Wine, naturally, remains at the heart of it.

Small Wonder now draws fruit from vineyards in both the Tamar and Coal River valleys, while the cellar door will also pour sister labels Wayfinder and Swell Season, along with Tasmanian spirits.

Visitors can take a 45-minute tour through the working winery or simply find a table, order a glass and look across the vineyard.

We support both approaches.

The certified organic estate also uses solar power, rainwater harvesting and on-site water treatment, which is super impressive.

For a region already worth lingering over, Small Wonder gives us another very good reason to put the Tamar Valley on the road-trip list.

Small Wonder Cellar Door & Restaurant opens September 18 at 530 Auburn Road, Kayena, Tasmania.

Plan a visit to Small Wonder

Good Drops

Margan Saxonvale Mourvèdre 2024 — Broke Fordwich, NSW

Every now and then a wine comes along that makes you look twice at a grape you probably don’t drink very often.

The Margan Saxonvale Mourvèdre 2024 has been named Other Reds & Blends Wine of the Year in the 2027 Halliday Wine Companion, scoring 97 points and giving Margan its first win in the category.

The fruit comes from the old Saxonvale Vineyard at Broke Fordwich, established in the 1960s on the western slope of the Fordwich Sill. Mourvèdre often finds itself playing a supporting role in Australian blends. Here it gets the bottle to itself.

Margan ferments whole berries with wild yeast before maturation in second- and third-use French oak.

The result impressed Halliday’s Toni Paterson MW with its depth, energy and flow.

My Verdict: This is exactly why I like wandering beyond the usual Shiraz and Cabernet. A serious Australian Mourvèdre with a 97-point Halliday endorsement and enough individuality to make you curious. One I’d happily put on the table when somebody asks, “What are we drinking?”

The Region: Broke Fordwich, Hunter Valley, NSW

Best with: Slow-roasted lamb, chargrilled beef or something smoky from the barbecue.

$60 when tasted by Halliday.

Margan Saxonvale Mourvèdre 2024

The Glendronach Boynsmill House Edition 14 Year Old

Now this is how you celebrate a 200th birthday. Highland distillery The Glendronach, founded in 1826, has marked its bicentenary with the limited Boynsmill House Edition, a 14-year-old single malt.

The distillery is famous for its sherry-cask whisky, and that remains at the heart of this release, with Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez casks joined by a small selection of former Claret red-wine casks.

Master blender Rachel Barrie has created a whisky heading firmly towards the richer end of the cabinet: bramble and stone fruit, toffee, hazelnut and raisin, followed by dried fruit, chocolate and caramel.

It’s bottled at 46.8 per cent ABV.

My Verdict: Sherry-cask whisky already has my attention. Throw some Claret casks into the mix and give it a 200-year story and I’m listening very closely. Rich, fruity and made for slow drinking. This is one I’d love to get my hands on.

The Region: Highlands, Scotland

Best with: After dinner, neat, and absolutely nowhere to be.

Festival Watch

Tulips with a Turkish twist

Tesselaar Tulip Festival | Silvan, Victoria | September 12–13

The Tesselaar Tulip Festival opens for 2026 this weekend, but the first celebration has a distinctly Turkish flavour.

There’s good reason for it. Tulips were cultivated in Türkiye centuries before they became synonymous with the Dutch, and this weekend Tesselaar celebrates that history with Turkish music, dancing, art and, most importantly for us, plenty of food.

Expect gözleme, Adana kebabs, baklava and Turkish delight, along with Turkish coffee — after which you can even have your fortune read from the cup.

All of this happens among more than a million spring-flowering bulbs at the Tesselaar farm in Silvan.

One thing readers should know: unusually warm and wet growing conditions have reduced the size of this year’s main tulip fields, so Tesselaar has cut admission prices by 30 per cent. Adult entry is currently $27.50 and concession $24.50.

Turkish Weekend runs September 12–13, 10am–5pm at Tesselaar Flower Farm, Silvan.

Tesselaar Turkish Weekend

Who’ll pay the most for Australia’s first mangoes?

Mango season is nearly here, and Brisbane is preparing to welcome it in suitably eccentric Australian fashion.

On September 17, Brisbane Markets will hold its annual Mango Auction, when the first symbolic tray of Australian mangoes for the 2026 season goes under the hammer.

The highest bidder earns the rather magnificent title of Mango Monarch.

The tradition has been running for more than 20 years and has raised more than $1.2 million for Queensland charities, with this year’s proceeds supporting Redkite and The Lady Musgrave Trust.

It all starts at Brisbane Markets from 7am.

One tray of mangoes. One very enthusiastic bidder.

We’ll find out next week what they’re prepared to pay

On My Radar

La dolce vita — without leaving Australia

You don’t necessarily need a passport to find a little piece of Italy. Italian-Australian travel writer Cristian Bonetto has gone looking for the Italian fingerprints all over Australia for his new book, ITALO: Culture and Dining in Italian Australia.

The 288-page book travels through Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, exploring restaurants, enotecas and coffee alongside architecture, mosaics, galleries, fashion, design and wine.

There are walking tours and carefully selected places to eat, drink and shop, with Bonetto’s own stories woven through a broader look at how generations of Italian Australians have helped shape the way this country eats, drinks and lives.

It’s also lavishly photographed, which feels appropriate. A book about Italian style shouldn’t really turn up looking ordinary.

Why it’s on my radar: I love the premise. We talk endlessly about Australia’s love affair with Italian food, but ITALO goes much further, tracing how deeply Italian culture has worked its way into our cities and everyday lives. And yes, there are plenty of places to eat and drink along the way.

ITALO: Culture and Dining in Italian Australia by Cristian Bonetto is published by Hardie Grant Explore on September 15, RRP $45.

A BIT DIFFERENT…

Beam me up, bartender

Someone in Sydney has apparently decided cocktails aren’t complicated enough.

At Dean & Nancy on 22, high above the city, the 2001 Space Odyssey cocktail takes its inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi classic.

The ingredients are serious: Glenfiddich 21 Single Malt, apples, pears, cacao, cinnamon, Calvados and Timur berry.

The vessel is less conventional.

It arrives in a metallic pouch, inspired by the space-age world of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It’s one of 14 creations on the bar’s Time Machine menu, developed by Dean & Nancy’s team in collaboration with Maybe Sammy and inspired by people, inventions and pop-culture moments from the mid-20th century.

Another drink pays tribute to Road Runner. It’s tequila-based and arrives in a custom 3D-printed dynamite vessel.

And if that sounds slightly bonkers, that’s rather the point.

Dean & Nancy on 22 is on Level 22 at 2 Hunter Street, Sydney.

AFTER DARK

Cocktails, violins and postcards to strangers

There’s a little old-world glamour coming to Flinders Street.

Ms Ava, inside Rendezvous Hotel Melbourne, has launched Society Sessions, a monthly evening inspired by the glamour of the bar’s namesake, Ava Gardner.

There’ll be live violin music in the hotel’s Grand Vestibule, cocktails and canapés, but it’s the postcard idea that caught my attention.

Guests are given a postcard and invited to leave behind a memory, travel tip or piece of advice for the next person ordering the cocktail.

They can also read the anonymous postcards left by previous guests.

In a world where most correspondence now disappears into phones and inboxes, there’s something rather lovely about that.

Ms Ava’s signature cocktail combines gin, salted cranberry and raspberry syrup, sweet vermouth and lime.

Society Sessions runs September 25 and October 30, from 5pm to 8pm at Rendezvous Hotel Melbourne, 328 Flinders Street.

Until next Friday… keep discovering, keep tasting and never drive past a country pub on an empty stomach.