Native ingredients from its own garden, dry-grown vines and camel-fat potatoes are all part of the approach that’s earned this SA winery two major wine tourism awards.
Salade niçoise has been around for generations. But you haven’t had one quite like the version coming out of the kitchen at Paulett Wines’ Bush deVine Restaurant in the Clare Valley.
Head chef Thomas “Erky” Erkelenz starts with Australian kingfish, cures it in pepperberry, then cold-smokes it using old oak staves from the winery alongside pine needles, lavender and Geraldton wax.
Add green tomatoes, olives and a soft-boiled quail egg, and you’ve got what Erky describes as “familiar flavours through a bush food tinted lens”.
“We’re never really trying to reinvent the wheel,” he says. “We take a lot of inspiration from classical dishes and combinations and break down what actually makes that thing come together and work. Then we can piece it together with the natives.”
Why one winery won two awards
That approach has won Paulett Wines and Bush deVine two of the seven 2027 SA Best Of Wine Tourism Awards: Culinary Experiences and Sustainable Wine Tourism Practices.
Judges singled out the native bush foods, unusual food and wine pairings and relaxed visitor experience, and commended its commitment to nurturing young chefs – Erky is one of the oldest in the kitchen at just 31.
They also praised the way sustainability runs through the whole business, restaurant included.
It’s not Pauletts’ first win – it also took out Culinary Experiences in 2021 and Innovative Wine Tourism Experiences in 2023.
The awards are part of South Australia’s membership of the Great Wine Capitals Global Network, an alliance of leading wine regions that includes Bordeaux and Napa Valley. A steering committee coordinates the state awards, with representatives from PIRSA (the Department of Primary Industries and Regions), the SA Tourism Commission, the SA Wine Industry Association and Adelaide University.
Pauletts will now represent South Australia in both categories at the international awards in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, this month.
Managing director Ali Paulett runs the winery with her husband Matt, whose parents started it in 1983, and says the two wins belong together.
“We don’t run things separately,” she says. “Between vineyard, winery and restaurant, we are all one engine, and we are one experience.”
And she says the award belongs to everyone. “We couldn’t be prouder of our team because they all contribute to it – from the winemaker to Erky.”
Why ‘sustainable’ isn’t good enough
Ali prefers a different word: regenerative.
“‘Sustainable’ is if we just keep doing what we’re doing,” she says. “That’s not improving anything.”
“We don’t own this land,” she says. “We’re borrowing from our grandchildren, so we need to make it better than how we found it.”
That includes being careful with water, which is often in short supply. Pauletts’ main block of mature vines hasn’t been irrigated since 1999.
The winery itself isn’t connected to mains water, either. It runs largely on collected rainwater, while wastewater is filtered through reed beds for reuse.
“When we dry grow [the vines], they send their roots really deep, and then they actually survive drought a lot better because their roots aren’t near the surface drying out.”
Ali says those roots also give the wines their distinctive sense of place.
“You can imagine them sitting on that slate deep, deep down, licking that rock, and that’s where all that real minerality and characteristics come from.
“Get it right in the vineyard, don’t stuff it up in the winery, then just bottle that beautifully.”
A garden before there was a restaurant
That sense of place doesn’t stop with the vines.
Ali planted Pauletts’ sensory bush food garden around 2010 to improve biodiversity on the property, years before Bush deVine restaurant existed. Spread across about 2500 sq m, it now contains more than 80 native species and around 1000 plants.
“The idea was a sensory garden – a bush food sensory garden where you can walk around, sit in there and enjoy it,” Ali says.
It’s also a place to learn about native plants and their traditional First Nations uses, and see where some of the ingredients on the menu begin. Ali still takes school groups through it today, and it won her the 2023 SA AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award.
Ali used the award money to refresh the garden and connect it with Ngadjuri people.
How it works in the kitchen
Erky picks the smoking herbs for his kingfish from the garden, while native thyme, pepperleaf, saltbush and native myrtle feature across the spring menu – with green ants even turning up on the cheese course.
He pitched that approach from the start, turning up to his 2019 interview with about 15 pages of mock menus and wine matches built around native ingredients.
A whole lamb arrives every week and he butchers it in-house, using the fat, bones, backstraps and legs across several dishes.
“Literally nothing is going in the bin whatsoever,” he says.
Then there’s the camel lardo – herb-cured from the hump, which, despite the old myth, stores fat rather than water. The menu has it shaved over asparagus, and rendered for roast potatoes. The camel comes through Remarkable Meat Co, which works with feral pest species and underused animal products to reduce waste.
“If you said, ‘Hey, we’re going to sit down and eat some camel fat’, it doesn’t sound quite as good,” Erky says. “But if it’s presented in a really nice, pretty way with a bit of a story behind it, and it can be a bit easier to get people on board.”
Sustainability includes staff
Erky, who trained in Adelaide before heading back to Clare, says sustainability should also include the people doing the work.
“Diners are happy to come in and quiz us about their steak,” he says. “Was it grass-fed? Is it hormone-free? What was the farmer’s name? What was the cow’s name?”
“But they’re not too fussed if there’s someone out the back who is on hour 12 of a 16-hour shift and hasn’t had a day off in eight days.”
Those kind of work hours don’t happen in his kitchen.
“At the end of the day, it is someone’s lunch,” he says. “We’re not working in an ER. We’re not in a war zone.
“It can be hard work, but it also has to be rewarding.”
Pauletts has a reputation for keeping staff rather than churning through them, Ali says.
“You walk past the kitchen, and all you hear is laughter. It’s the complete opposite of the traditional old yelling angry kitchen.”
Standing out when wine is doing it tough
Pauletts is doing all this during a tough time for Australian wine.
“Extremely hard,” Ali says. “Excruciatingly hard.”
Her answer is to “stay relevant, stay current, stick to your strengths, stick to what you know”.
The state government’s $109 million Wine Industry Transition and Growth Package, announced in September, includes support for growers to transition vineyards and a $675,000 campaign promoting SA food and wine to boost tourism.
Ali also sees importance in supporting other locals. She chairs Regional Development Australia Yorke and Mid North and sits on the board of the Clare Valley Wine & Grape Association.
“For us to succeed, Clare’s got to succeed.”
Clare producers recommend each other’s businesses and lend each other equipment.
“If something fails, they ring us up and I’m like, ‘Absolutely, no worries. We’ll send stuff down and help them out,’” she says.
“We’ve got so many great restaurants here that there’s always a reason for visitors to stay an extra night.”
What’s on the menu?
The spring menu starts at $70 per person for three shared courses, because Erky wants people to be able to afford to come regularly – “we’re definitely not just an anniversary place”.
If you’ve only got an hour or so, the wine-and-canapé flights pair five Pauletts wines with five native canapés from $55 per person.
The menu changes every 10 to 12 weeks.
“We’ve got a few people that book it into their calendars to come and see whatever we’ve done next,” Erky says.
The complete list of 2027 Best Of Wine Tourism Award winners for Adelaide, South Australia, is here.
