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Numbers game: Cork & Cleaver sommelier Jim Boutsis says the restaurant currently has around 200 dozen cases in stock supporting the 350 wines rotated through its wine list.
JIM Boutsis likes to sample at least 1000 different wines a year. Boil it down and that’s about three wines a day, every day, of said year (give or take a public holiday or two). All on top of his work as sommelier and maître d’ at Cork & Cleaver – Adelaide’s signature steak house. Tucked away in the city’s swanky eastern suburbs C&C currently has around 200 dozen cases in stock supporting the 350 wines rotated through its wine list. A list Boutsis admits is dominated by classic South Australian reds “because that’s what our customers want”. But he is also the first to admit tastes, his included, are constantly evolving. For example, a decade ago C&C might have had one fish and one chicken item on the menu – which is presented to each diner on a meat cleaver. Today it has expanded that to both vegetarian and, shock, horror, even vegan. “Because that is also what some of our customers want,” Boutsis adds. “We recently hosted a vegan wedding here,” he says. “And only two or three years ago we would never had had a Moscato on the wine list and now I have five.”
16 Grapegrower & Winemaker
Stratos Pouras, C&C founder and owner, would have to be one of Adelaide’s most enduring restaurateurs – and more enduring than his wine list, which undergoes constant change. With his Glenunga restaurant he found the perfect formula of red meat, red meat and red wine. In its 34 years he might have occasionally tweaked the menu but the format, the décor and even some of the staff is pretty much the way they were when it first opened its doors 36 years ago. Pouras and Boutsis first met up at Swains in 1977. Pouras left in 1978 to found C&C with Boutsis following him in 1984. But not before becoming his son-in-law in 1981, marrying daughter Christine. It was a marriage made in food service heaven. While Pouras kept driving the high standards from the kitchen and front of house Boutsis quickly settled in behind the bar, in the cellar and building a strong rapport with his new-look wine list and the legions of regular customers. Wine, as Boutsis says, “is the essence of life as far as I am concerned”. “I did not really grow up with it, and www.winebiz.com.au
1000 ways to cap your day This is the first of an occasional series looking at high-profile restaurants and how, and why, they choose the labels which go on their wine lists. This month Andrew Mole caught up with the man behind the Cork & Cleaver’s cellar.
July 2014 – Issue 606