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Australia’s Wine List of the Year 2009 + Best Restaurant List + Best New List: Rockpool Bar & Grill Sydney

Sometimes words fail to get the job done. Yes, this is a wine list in the sense that it is a printed representation of what the diner may select to drink with dinner, but the reality of what is on offer can’t be adequately expressed by mere squiggles on a page. This is a game-changer. Some pure numbers might help to build a framework for understanding the wine offering at Sydney’s spectacular Rockpool Bar & Grill. More than 3750 separate listings. Total holdings of more than 20,000 bottles. Value upwards of $9 million.

But just as words come up short, so too do numbers and to truly understand what it is we’re dealing with here, try this exercise. Think of any of the great wines of the world; the cornerstones of the vinous canon; the wines that for most of us exist only in dusty copies of Broadbent or Coates. Got one? Now check the Rockpool Bar & Grill list. Or lists, to be more accurate: a 62-page volume bound in white leather for whites and a 126-page tome in similarly colour-coded hide for reds.

It’s almost certain that not only have you found the wine in question, but chances are it’s available in magnum, too.

David Doyle is one of the world’s great collectors and it was his decision to bring part of his collection out from the US and to shape a grand restaurant around it with Neil Perry in Sydney that brought about the $35 million Rockpool Bar & Grill.

Everything was air-freighted and temperature-controlled; the rare and expensive came by private jet, and secreted, appropriately enough, in the bank vaults that remain from the restaurant’s previous life as the City Mutual Life Assurance Society. And it’s from here that the real jaw-droppers come.

Its obvious strengths are Burgundy and Bordeaux; nine vintages of Roumier Bonnes-Mares going back to 1937, 11 vintages of Corton-Charlemagne from Coche-Dury, 55 different listings from Montrachet, 34 vintages of La Tâche back to 1934 and 23 of Romanée-Conti, including ’29 and ’45, as well as the ’71 and ’78 in magnum, 1899 Cheval Blanc, 1900 Margaux, ’61 Palmer and d’Yquem back to 1921.

It features a cracking selection of Rhônes, Huet Vouvrays back to 1945, Madeira going back to the 18th century and a staggeringly good line-up of Barolo. It also includes a collection of Californian wine, the likes of which we’ve never seen in this country: heavy-hitters such as Diamond Creek, Harlan Estate and Screaming Eagle and Sonoma and Russian River pinot from  Rochioli and Willams Selyem.

But this isn’t merely the inventory of someone’s cellar. A great deal of work has gone into creating a workable list that can be utilised by all, not just a coterie of Russian oligarchs who might wander in off the street.

Rockpool sommelier Nicole Reimers spent several months prior to opening spicing up the selection of contemporary labels from here and abroad before handing over management of the list to Sophie Otton and her team of sommeliers.

And while it’s the big-ticket items that attract the most attention, it is a firm commitment that 10 per cent of the list must come in under $100, meaning a selection of some 370 wines, that well and truly puts paid to any suggestion that this is a mere trophy list full of dusty old museum pieces and of little practical use. NICK RYAN

Rockpool Bar & Grill, 66 Hunter St, Sydney, NSW, (02) 8078 1900.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY EARL CARTER