Winnifred’s – 34 Arthur Street, Fortitude Valley
Winnifred’s is a very exciting new venue in Brisbane that combines excellent dishes with a very strong offering of some of the best Champagnes from many of the best producers from that famous region.
The venue is in the central Fortitude Valley area in a purpose built building that has a number of specialist rooms as well as the main restaurant area. These specialist rooms allow them to hold special events based around the vast array of Champagnes that they have in their cellar which has over 10,000 bottles on offer!
This amazing place is the culmination of the vision of Megan Nunn who has for many years been a promoter of grower Champagnes. And by the way, the venue is named after her grandmother with whom she had a special relationship.
Needless to say with the emphasis being so strongly on wines from the Champagne region (although there are wines from other regions available as well), the food is also a celebration of the food of France.
On a recent visit to Brisbane we had both a lunch in the restaurant and an evening snack with some friends in the bar where we had some excellent snacks and some great Champagnes.
You can see in our photograph below, a picture we took at the beginning of our night visit, which occured on the same day as our lunch here.
For our lunch at Winnifred’s we first perused the wine menu as it is one of the most thorough Champagne wine lists we have had the pleasure of reading in Australia. There were adundant pleasures in store with many of the most iconic producers from this region represented on page after page of well-described bottles from every corner of the Champagne region.
When we reached the section describing the wines of the Côtes de Bar we came across a number of wines from some of our favourites from this region including Roland Piollot, Marie Courtin and Charles Dufour. As we already import the first two we decided to try a Charles Dufour #12 Cache Dans l’Evidence. We had met him again a few weeks earlier at a wine salon near Beaune that we try to attend each year.
This Champagne from Charles comprises 55% Pinot Noir, 35% Chardonnay and 10% Pinot Blanc. The organically farmed grapes come from his vineyards in the Cotes du Bar, which is rapidly becoming well-known as a place for sourcing interesting Champagnes, especially those that are made using minimal intervention or organic or biodynamic processes in the winemaking.
We had recently tasted a selection of Charles’ wines at a Salon near Beaune and this one also stood out as a fine Champagne.
So, we were very happy with the quallity of the Champagne that we ordered at Winnifred’s and once the food started arriving we were also very happy with the quality of the cooking by Head Chef Antoine Potier and his team.
The two main courses that we ordered at lunch time were both excellent examples of their genre with the first dish being a beautiful piece of fresh ocean fish (with the skin cooked to perfection) topped with mussels matelote and with battered zuchinni on the side.
You can see our photo of this delightful dish immediately below.
Our other main course was some beautiful lamb that was very tender and packed with flavour which was accompanied by some delicious spears of asparagus with a green sauce and slices of onion and mushrooms. This was a delicious dish!!
That evening we returned with friends who live in Brisbane because we knew that once they had been here they would become regulars.
For more information on the Champagnes we import and which Winnifred’s have on their wine list you can read about the Marie Courtin Champagnes here.
If you want to try a suburban bar and bottleshop in Brisbane that sells some of our natural imported wine try visiting LPO Wine Store in Tarragindi which we describe here.
