By Andy Young
Australian restaurants have some of the best wine lists in the world, after winning big at the annual World's Best Wine Lists Awards.
Organised by the UK-based magazine The World of Fine Wine, the awards give out one-, two- and three-star rankings to restaurant wine lists. Australia won big, with 249 restaurants picking up awards, second only to the United States, which has 312 restaurants making the grade.
In total 40 Australian restaurants won a prestigious three-star rating. A one-star rating is given to a "good wine list", a two-star rating to a "very good wine list" and a three-star rating to a "great wine list" based on the breadth, depth, interest, quality, value, organisation and accuracy of the list.
Matthew Lamb, head aommelier at Melbourne's Vue de Monde, said: "It's a huge honor to receive such recognition from such a celebrated panel of global wine authorities. We put a huge amount of work and effort into the wine list and program, and such acknowledgement makes those 2am nights of adding wines to the list all the more worthwhile."
The wine awards are judged by a panel containing some of the world's leading wine critics and masters of wine from around the globe including: Alder Yarrow, Elin McCoy, Ch'ng Poh Tiong, Andrew Jefford, Andreas Larsson, Francis Percival and Tom Stevenson. The judges assessed well over 4,000 wine lists from restaurants from around the world before coming up with the final 896 one-, two- and three-star restaurants.
The Australian-based 3 stars in 2015 are:
- ARIA Restaurant
- Attica
- Bistro Guillaume Perth
- Bistro Moncur
- Black By Ezard
- Cape Lodge Restaurant
- Circa The Prince
- Epocha
- Estelle
- Felix
- FermentAsian
- Flower Drum
- Glass Brasserie Hilton
- Jonah's Restaurant and Boutique Hotel
- Kazuki's
- La Petanque Restaurant
- Love Tilly Devine
- Marque Restaurant
- Masani
- Moon Under Water
- No.8 By John Lawson
- Pilu at Freshwater
- Provenance Restaurant
- Quay
- Roberts Circa 1876 Restaurant
- Rockpool Bar & Grill Melbourne
- Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney
- Rosetta Ristorante
- Royal Mail Hotel Restaurant
- Sepia
- Spice Temple
- Ten Minutes By Tractor – Restaurant
- The Louise Appellation
- The Point Albert Park
- The Press Club Room
- The Rockpool Perth, Australia
- The Studio Bistro
- The Trustee Bar & Bistro
- Vue de Monde
- Woodland House
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