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| - Australia has a huge wine industry, and produces some world class wines - I mean really good stuff that can be laid down for years. Don't expect to see much of that on the wine list at Down Under Wines. Penfolds doesn't even make an appearance on this wine list. Presumably their list changes, but on our visit there were only a couple of selections from Australia and one from New Zealand. This place should be playing up Australia's wine, but instead we get the same stuff I can get at Sprouts. California cab. Chilean malbec. The owner, Roger Carpenter, is an expat Australian. He is fully aware that his native land produces fine cab and merlot right along side a lot of shiraz. Try an Aussie GSM sometime - very good stuff. Why not more from the southern hemisphere? Perhaps I'm being too harsh. Could it be that the clientele would be scared away from something unfamiliar? One thing that is helpful on their wine list are a few tasting notes, so if you're ordering something unfamiliar it's not a complete mystery.
I can't report much on the food. We stopped in for after dinner drinks. We ordered a couple of bruchetta, one of which was not particularly good - blue cheese, honey, and prosciutto. It was just way too salty. The other was brie and apple, which I've had comparable elsewhere. The list of cheese available is uninteresting. Fresh mozzarella, Romano, Gouda, cheddar - how unusual... I commented to my wife that we could easily nip down to Whole Foods and have a dozen cheeses we'd never heard of. Vine Expressions, also in Gilbert, has a little more adventurous cheese plate, mixing the familiar with a few modestly exotic selections.
Parting shot: they have a few beers, but no Foster's? And the salads are just salads. I thought Australian salads were supposed to be a 10oz. steak with a piece of parsley.
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