Leeuwin Estate

Leeuwin Estate Restaurant is the gastronomic dining room of Leeuwin Estate, a 1973-founded Margaret River winery, the home of Australia's most internationally recognised Chardonnay programme (the Art Series Chardonnay, with a hand-painted Australian-art label commissioned annually since 1980), and is one of Margaret River's three three-star Good Food Guide restaurants. The dining room is built into the original 1970s winery building with handcrafted jarrah-wood walls, the largest collection of Australian art outside Sydney displayed on the walls, and a 270-degree view of the Leeuwin vineyards.

Chef Dany Angove runs the seasonal modern-Western-Australian menu. The four-course pairing rotates seasonally; signatures include a hand-cut WA-coast yellowfin tuna tartare with finger lime; a slow-cooked Margaret River Wagyu shoulder; a hand-rolled tagliolino with WA black truffle; a wood-fired WA-coast snapper with samphire; the famous 'Leeuwin chocolate' for the dessert course.

The wine programme is the Leeuwin Estate Art Series vertical, four vintages of the iconic Chardonnay across the pairing flight. The cellar's Art Series collection going back to 1980 is the deepest single-producer Chardonnay vertical in Australia.

The dining room and outdoor lawn-garden together hold a hundred and twenty covers; the Leeuwin Concert lawn (host of the famous February Leeuwin Concert series, with international classical and pop performers since 1985) is visible from the western dining-room window.

Leeuwin Estate is the birthday-grade lunch in Margaret River, the Australian-art collection on the walls is the conversation, the Art Series Chardonnay programme is genuinely distinctive, and the four-course pairing format is the canonical wine-country occasion. Book the corner four-top by the western lawn-garden window.