Best Wine List

The kitchen rules and the drinks are expected to play a support role.

But increasingly in South Australia our wine lists take equal billing and often can be the main attraction.

This year's award for best wine list is a supreme example, even more so because it is one of the key successes of what otherwise may appear to be a simple country pub.

The Victory is, however, much more than this, with a great reputation for its modern, restaurant-level menu, which often carries freshly caught gulf fish and seafood. The long-range view overlooking a glorious Sellicks Beach somehow encourages a hunger for such produce.

And it creates a thirst for the right wines to match the snapper, flathead or whiting that may have come in that morning.

In publican Doug Govan's eyes, this can mean a fresh riesling. It also means the possibility of trying a choice aged riesling. Or, a fine chardonnay he may have discovered on a recent West Australian road trip. Or, one from his beloved collection of French Burgundy or Chablis.

His suggestions could go on and on. Maybe a McLaren Vale fiano or viognier. There are plenty to choose from - like about 8000 bottles from his very individual collection. This is the joy of the Victory's wine list. It is a personal offering created by a keen collector without being eccentric and inaccessible.

When you dine or drink at the Victory, you have the rare opportunity to explore and drink from an extraordinary cellar - and there are bottles at every price range to please all budgets. You can grab a $20 drop that may be sitting downstairs right next to a $200 bottle.

For white lovers, the fridge operates as the first base, but there is a huge collection of older rieslings that the man in charge now realises is perhaps just a bit too large and is slowly being brought out from storage off-site, where most of the wines are kept.

For reds, the list becomes even more hands-on. If you want to explore further than the dining room's blackboard, a well-secured cellar, built a year ago under the pub, houses an impressive line-up of shiraz, cabernet, grenache and blends, pinot and other red varieties now forging their way on to many lists such as tempranillo, malbec, mataro and barbera.

Even deeper into the collection sit his Burgundies and Bordeaux, which now occupy the room that only a year ago was his entire cellar.

The foreigners are most popular with McLaren Vale winemakers and wine industry folk who patronise the hotel for such pleasures. ``We can't make Burgundy - white or red - so having them here is about offering something that can't come from here,'' Doug says.

Meanwhile a whole wall of shiraz points to another trick with managing a wine list. Doug has chosen to order them in the cellar by vintage rather than region.

``It was a choice about which way to go,'' he says. His customers want local and beyond, he argues.

``I didn't want to separate them.''

His personal connection with just about every bottle he offers for drinking is the key to the joy of this list.

``I put bottles out because it's something I'd like to see on a wine list myself,'' he says, pointing to his by-the-glass reds that include a couple of each of the main varieties, perhaps a mataro, a Villages Burgundy and even a couple of cult labels such as Greenock Creek and Wendouree.

``If I went into a restaurant and saw a 1996 Wendouree cabernet malbec at $20 a glass, I'd say `Yes, please','' Doug says.

And that's exactly what the Victory's list does.