Exploring our people, places and produce: Magill Estate Restaurant

Step out of your vehicle in late autumn at the Magill Estate Restaurant and you're in tantalising surrounds. In front of you lie the 18th century bluestone buildings and laneways of the Penfolds winery and, behind, the changing colours of the vineyard nudging suburban Adelaide. Beyond the homes and far off dark silhouettes of coastal industry lies the blue-grey Great Southern Ocean.

Sitting to the side of the historic winery is a thoroughly modern addition housing the restaurant where head chefs Emma McCaskill and Scott Huggins create some of the most sublime food in the nation matched with Penfolds wines.

For McCaskill and Huggins the opportunity to create great Australian cuisine and match it with our most iconic wines was one not to be missed. Both have travelled the world and cooked at some of the world's leading restaurants. McCaskill spent time at Narisawa in Tokyo - which clocked in at number 14 on this year's San Pellegrino World's top 50 restaurants - while Huggins spent time at Michelin-starred Tokyo institution Ryugin and at Iggy's in Singapore.

Magill Estate gives both chefs the opportunity to dazzle at home and highlight the best and freshest of homegrown produce.

Huggins talks proudly of sourcing pork from Barossa Heritage Pork, which only kills seven pigs a week. Moreover, the pigs' diet consists of milk produced by the farm's own small herd of Jersey cattle, which are milked daily for the pig's supper.

"We're also the only restaurant in Australia sourcing Wagyu striploin and tenderloin from Mayura Station on South Australia's Limestone Coast. The Station's managing partner Scott de Bruin only prepares five or six carcasses a month and they produce amazing meat," Huggins says.

For both chefs their philosophy is simple. Keep the integrity of the star ingredient and surround it with startling flavours.

One recent highlight of the seven-course degustation menu was the Barossa Heritage pork belly with a macadamia and pine nut salad, pickled cauliflower and bitter leaves. Drizzled over the salad, a pine nut emulsion made with sake and sugar cut through the pork crackling and slowly filled the mouth with subtly sour caramel flavours. The pork itself remained delicately flavoured while the add-ons complemented and enhanced the pork's richness. It was matched with a Penfolds 2004 Bin 138.

"It's about keeping the ingredients simple," McCaskill says. "We want to work with ingredients people can relate to but prepare them in a way they've never had before.

"Simple, easily sourced ingredients mean planting a vegetable patch and herb garden on-site while also sourcing fresh produce from writer Nigel Hopkins' Adelaide Hills property such as wombok, brussels sprouts, wild rocket and fennel."

Their focus on quality also means venturing further afield to find the best – such as prawns from Queensland's Rocky Point Hatchery at Woongoolba.

"We fly in six kilograms of live prawns weekly and store them in a tank in the kitchen and they're not caught and prepared until just before we open." Huggins says.

Sources closer to the kitchen include McCaskill's take on Devonshire tea, in which the star is a Shiraz jam made from grapes found in a shaded corner of the Magill Estate vineyard.

It all adds up to one of the nation's most exquisite dining experiences.

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This content is produced by Good Food in commercial partnership with Tourism Australia.