Southern star
285 Rundle Street, Adelaide, South Australia
Tel: 00 61 08 8232 5000
Fax: 00 61 08 8232 5757
THE centre of Adelaide is an intriguing mix of turn-of-the-century colonial buildings and modern office blocks. It's an elegant, leisurely city, where cars roll easily along broad boulevards.
Adelaide is also a short car journey from some of the most exciting wine areas of Australia, in particular the Adelaide Hills to the east and the McLaren Vale to the south. In short, Adelaide is the ideal location for one of the world's great wine bars: the Universal.
The Universal Wine Bar was opened by Michael Hill-Smith in 1992 in the city's East End, on Rundle Street. This street has two distinct personalities. The first part is pedestrianised and full of clothes shops and shopping malls. Further on, it becomes distinctly raffish, with second-hand record stores, a House of Rubber and lots of bars and restaurants, including the Universal.
Hill-Smith is a wine-maker, wine writer and restaurateur. He was also the first Australian to become a Master of Wine, and he is one of the trio of tasters who select wines for Singapore Airlines. In 1989, he set up the Shaw and Smith winery with his cousin Martin Shaw in the Adelaide Hills. There, they concentrate on making Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, with grapes chiefly sourced from their nearby Woodside Vineyard. Hill-Smith has also written for a number of wine magazines. At the moment, he is a columnist for Gourmet Traveller magazine.
With a background like that, you would expect the Universal to have a pretty interesting range of wines. And it does.
"The bar is full of wine people and people who want to drink wine," says Hill-Smith. "There are always 20 wines by the glass, and the list keeps changing. No wine is on for longer than two or three weeks. Customers can be experimental with a glass of wine costing Aus$5-Aus$7 [£2-£2.80] - you don't have to commit yourself to buying a full bottle.
"The by-the-glass list gives me the chance to use it as a launching ground for new styles of wine and new producers - creating the fun of discovering new things."
But it was wine by the glass that caused an early crisis at the Universal. "I couldn't understand it," says Hill-Smith. "We had the busiest restaurant and bar in Adelaide but we were making no profit. It took us two or three months to realise that this was because of 10-15% overpour on wine-by-the-glass sales."
He adds: "The solution was simple - glasses with a Plimsoll line.
Minimum wastage
"There is no perfect number of wines by the glass," he believes. "It all depends on keeping wastage to a minimum while keeping the wines in good condition. You need to find the number of wines that suits the place you are running. We find 20 wines by the glass quite sustainable, but I have seen people struggle with just 10.
"We looked at nitrogen Cru-overs. They are the most expensive way of storing wine. We use a gas gun and chill the wines overnight. The first job in the morning is to get the opened reds out of the fridge.
"Eighty-five per cent of our sales are from the short list," he explains. This has brief, catchy notes on the wines. For example, "Associating innocence with something this exciting?" sums up Valdespino Innocente Fino Sherry.
There are about 250 wines on the full list, and the wines are arranged by grape variety then subdivided by listing those from Australia first, followed by imported versions.
The Universal has a chameleon-like quality. It's a comfortable, easy room, and the mood can change from suited business lunches to "a great bar scene" in the early evening. On Friday nights it can get very crowded, with muscle-men on the door and people drinking large amounts, while upstairs at the same time there may be a tutored tasting run by someone such as David Gleave of Liberty Wines.
There are one or two wine tastings every month, with a wide range of subjects - for instance, top Champagnes and top growths of 1995 - along with evenings with wine-makers. And every wine personality who visits the area drifts through the Universal. Hill-Smith says: "Some treat it like a clubhouse, even leaving bags here."
He adds: "We don't have a set clientele or a set pattern. We cater for a range of people here. If someone wants a plate of something at the bar and a glass of wine, that's fine. But at the same time, there will be someone who wants a great lunch and a great bottle to go with it."
When Hill-Smith opened the Universal in 1992, Adelaide had no idea of a modern wine bar, but it took off. "It showed that wine by the glass and quality wines could be worked into a restaurant concept," says Hill-Smith.
"It is said that South Australians are parochial. This is not the case. Australian love Rhône wines. This comes from their love of Shiraz. We sell more Rhône wines than Bordeaux.
"Sales of Pinot are strong. There are now some very good Pinots coming out of Australia and New Zealand. Over the past year, there has been a huge comeback for dry and off-dry Australian Riesling."
Hill-Smith believes that its reputation as an excellent food wine has been a crucial factor in Riesling's revival. He says: "I'm amazed at how much sparkling red we sell on a Friday night, though the effects of drinking large quantities of this is quite horrible to watch.
"Our food has to be wine-friendly and it must have a sense of balance," he says. "We only have a small kitchen, so the menu has to fit the kitchen's capabilities and limitations. When we first opened, we offered simple snacks like cheese and rillette, but we found that people want a restaurant experience in a wine bar. They are looking for more formal food so we hired good chefs.
"But simple remains best. I look for a feeling of completeness in a menu. One that looks like a patchwork of influences and dishes is a silly menu. I avoid that. Unfortunately, today there is one menu sold around the world - Caesar salad, grilled calves' liver, etc. Our food has Asian, Mediterranean and Indian influences. Our approach is to buy a good piece of fish and then decide how to cook it. It's only a problem if chefs try to mix too many influences."
The Universal is a busy, bustling kind of place. That night, as well as Hill-Smith and his wife, it held someone from Brian Croser's Petaluma winery and an expatriate Englishman from Hong Kong planning to start a wine magazine.
In order to relax at all, Hill-Smith had to sit with his back to the restaurant. "The restaurant industry is the most masochistic," he laughs, "but it is great fun." n
