The Wined Bar, also known as the NWC W Bar, is like a cellar door with a breakfast and lunch menu. It’s a place where you can taste and purchase more than 100 Australian wines or take a seat and enjoy them with food.

Located inside the National Wine Centre, the Wined Bar offers seating indoors, at high bar tables and at regular tables and chairs, as well as outdoors on the terrace, where you are met by the splendour of the Botanic Gardens.

Indoors and outdoors are two very different experiences. Indoors is an architectural and airy space, with a slightly executive edge. It’s similar to the Art Gallery café (Art Gallery Food + Wine), in that it’s located in a public exhibition building that has a focus on education.

Soft tofu, curried squash, cucumber relish and puffed rice. Photo Nat Rogers/InDaily

The Wined Bar currently does breakfast and lunch on week days, and weekend breakfasts. City workers on their way to the office might dream of going there for a naughty breakfast – poached eggs with Hollandaise or macerated strawberries with mascarpone and a single glass of chilled Champagne – but such offerings are available on weekends only. The week-day breakfast menu is more limited, with toast, toasted muesli, fruit loaf, and basic bacon and eggs.

Polenta chips with paprika, dried onion, chilli and mayonnaise. Photo Nat Rogers/InDaily

Patrick White has been chef de partie at The Wined Bar for the past six months after a three-and-a-bit-year stint as head chef at the Wright Street Hotel, serving modern pub food with tasty sharing plates and other enticing alternatives to chicken parmy.

So it’s not surprising that The Wined Bar food offering has recently changed to a shared, tapas-style menu with similar dishes to those you would find at your local pub. While it’s designed to showcase South Australian food and wine, it doesn’t always reflect the quality of many of the wines represented.

Murray Valley beef rib croquette with tomato salsa. Photo Nat Rogers/InDaily

The names of familiar brands and regions – such as Barossa Fine Foods, Beerenberg, Coriole, Murraylands, Flinders Ranges, Murray Valley and Lobethal – turn up in dish descriptions for charcuterie and cheese plates, dips, olives, croquettes, chips, terrines, “buns”, pizzas and salads. The menu lists ingredients such as pancetta, pistachio, peach, pear, goat cheese and smoked tomato, all of which can be matched to the 120 mostly South Australian wines available by the glass.

Cellar door manager Sarah Belsham pours a tasting from an Enomatic wine dispenser. Photo Nat Rogers/InDaily

What makes The Wined Bar special is that it is possibly the only place you could go in the world to get a taste of the best and the breadth of Australian wine. Each bottle of wine on tasting is presented behind glass in stainless-steel Enomatic wine-dispensing machines, arranged by varietal and in tasting order. Run your eyes across all those labels and swoon.

The great thing is that it’s all so accessible. Just leave your credit card with cellar-door manager Sarah Belsham and you can help yourself to any wine on tasting, from a 25ml pour of 2014 Clare Riesling 5452 by KT for $2.50 to a 150ml glass of 2010 Penfolds Grange Bin 95 for $150. Half glasses (75ml) are also available.

Strangely, there are no wine matches suggested for the dishes on the menu, so if you’re not sure where to start, Belsham – or any of the other well-informed Wined Bar staff – will help.

The Enomatic machines are exciting – you can keep going back for a tiny taste of many of the wines you’ve always wanted to try. Like a kid in a lolly shop, it’s hard to stop. As well as pure indulgence, the experience could also be educational and informative – but if you want to know more about individual wines, you have to speak to the staff because the wine list provides only the name of the winery, the variety, the region and the price. There is not a whiff of a description or tasting note, nor even a vintage year listed.

Wine Centre executive chef Tze Khaw. Photo Nat Rogers/InDaily

Tze Khaw came on board last week as executive chef to oversee the kitchens at the National Wine Centre after a long stretch with the Convention Centre. He is working with the staff to bring in new ideas and ways to make wine a feature of the food menu. Think subtle touches such as salad dressings, fruit pastes, winter casseroles and jellies all made with particular wine varietals as a major ingredient. Think “old-school” Spanish-style tapas matched to specific wines.

“We want to value-add to the wine-tasting experience with food,” said Khaw. “We’re always up to something in the kitchen and when people are in the bar for tastings I want to send down complementary bite-sized offerings to tease people’s tastebuds.

“It might be a tasting of the salmon we have just cured, or some pickled lemon; nothing too strong.”

Duck and pancetta terrine with cranberry, pistachio and black grape marmalade. Photo Nat Rogers/InDaily

Favourite dish: Duck and pancetta terrine with black grape marmalade ($15). A thick slice of pressed chunks of duck breast, bright green pistachios and red cranberries wrapped in pancetta and served with grilled sourdough bread and a pot of dark, spicy marmalade made from whole black grapes. The fact that grapes are used to make wine creates instant affection.

Other dishes: Murrayland free-range steamed chicken breast (pictured at top) with chorizo, grilled peach, goat cheese and rocket ($16). Underneath the delicate layer of rocket leaves, fresh grilled peach slices and goat cheese was a whole sliced breast of the most tender and flavoursome chicken, but we found the goat cheese a tad too overpowering for this dish.

Pork belly, salted pear, fennel and hazelnut. Photo Nat Rogers/InDaily

Pork belly, salted pear, fennel and hazelnut ($15). A couple of good-sized pieces of crisp pork belly sprinkled with more rocket leaves, slices of dried salted pear, shaved fennel and crushed hazelnut pieces. Another generous dish with good flavour.

Something sweet/to drink: The dessert menu offers only two dishes: Warm double chocolate brownie with fudge sauce and vanilla bean ice cream ($8.50), and Churros with hot chocolate fudge sauce ($12.50). There is also the option of local artisan cheeses served with house-made quince paste, Riverland muscatels (happy with the grapes again) and lavosh (one cheese is $10, then add $5 for each additional cheese).

We decided to finish Belsham’s brilliant wine flight suggestions instead: 5452 by KT 2014 Watervale Riesling; Romney Park Gloria 2013 Chardonnay from the Adelaide Hills; S.C. Pannell Prido 2013 Nebbiolo Rose from the Adelaide Hills; Tapanapa Foggy Hill Vineyard 2013 Pinot Noir from the Fleurieu Peninsula; Langmeil The Fifth Wave 2010 Grenache from the Barossa; Ulithorne 2012 Frux Fugis McLaren Vale Shiraz; Henschke Tappa Pass 2010 Barossa Shiraz; and finally, Penfolds 2010 Grange Bin 95.

InDaily looks forward to Khaw’s wine-focussed winter menu and seeing The Wined Bar grow in esteem and become more to the locals than a function centre and a tourist destination.

Wined Bar
Open for lunch Monday to Sunday from 12pm-7pm and for breakfast on weekdays from 8am -11am and weekends from 9am to 12pm.
National Wine Centre, Corner Botanic and Hackney Roads, Adelaide. Phone 8313 7454.