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.