🍷 Celebrating Australia’s wine lists

There’s so much more to a great wine list than choosing a bottle.

Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards recognise the sommeliers, restaurateurs and hospitality teams who put the time, knowledge and commitment into creating wine lists that add another dimension to the dining experience.

Now in its 33rd year, the awards celebrate wine lists across restaurants, hotels, pubs, clubs and wine bars, from carefully curated smaller lists to cellars with extraordinary depth.

A few weeks ago the 2026 awards were announced on Monday 28 September at NSW Parliament House. It is always great to catch up with industry friends, but a couple of shout outs. It was wonderful to see my old friend, now Emeritus Chair of these awards after 33 years (23 as Chair) and that the Best Listing of WA wines will now be known as The Peter Forrestal Award. Also important to remember the late Fiona Macdonald with Best Wine Bar List named after her and let’s here it for Infinity by Mark Best for taking out The Tony Hitchin Award for Australia’s Best New Wine List and - drum roll - Best Listing of Australian Wines.🥂 Thanks for flying the flag 🇦🇺with an all Australian list.

#WineListOfTheYear #AustralianWine #AustralianWineIndustry #Sommeliers #WineLists #LyndeyMilan #AustralianHospitality #AustraliasWineListofYearAwards @auswinelistoftheyear

A fabulous late lunch (don’t try and get an Uber from Melbourne Airport) at the new @cote.basque.restaurant with my ‘twin’ @giovannadabaco . Sensational anchovies and the best sea urchin ever. So good we ordered them both twice. Not that the crab Bartlett wasn’t amazing too. Thanks for fitting us in @chef_andrewmcconnell

Fire, food and an unforgettable afternoon. 🔥

One of the highlights of the Horizontal Festival was an industry lunch cooked by Francis Mallmann and his team from his restaurants around the world. He is known as “the godfather of open-fire cooking”.

The set up was incredible and to see with his cooking dome, a custom, towering metal structure used to suspend produce, whole chickens, and cuts of meat over slow-burning flames. Vegetables were cooked in the coals and potatoes on the plancha.

It was a relaxed afternoon of slow food, conversation, catching up with old friends and colleagues and inspiration: a reminder of just how much there is to learn when you step outside your own kitchen and experience how other chefs cook.

A very memorable festival experience. 🔥 thank you Horizontal Festival @horizontalfestival and Francis Mallmann @francis_mallmann56

#HorizontalFestival #FrancisMallmann #LyndeyMilan #FoodFestival #CookingOverFire #FoodAndTravel #ArgentinianFood

A lovely piece of news to share. ✨

Some WCEI members will be in Prague with our global organisation Les Femmes Chefs D`Enterprises Mondiales (FCEM) as my nomination for Entrepreneur of the Year goes forward.

It’s a wonderful honour to have my work recognised in this way, particularly alongside women from around the world who are doing such interesting and entrepreneurial things in business.

I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed from afar as I will be working at the Horizontal Festival this weekend. Whatever the outcome I relish the opportunity to celebrate the nomination with the amazing WCEI community.

#EntrepreneurOfTheYear #WCEI #WomenInBusiness #LyndeyMilan #WomenEntrepreneurs #BusinessWomen

See you at Horizontal Festival! 🎉

I am in the Southern Highlands for the second annual Horizontal Festival from 1 - 5 October, where I am MCing the Maldon Salt Culinary Stage over the long weekend.

Forget the rain, there’s a lot happening across the festival, ad I am right in the middle of the food action, introducing chefs, chatting to them, giving cooking demonstrations of my own and soaking up all the flavour and energy of the Culinary Stage.

Plus come and see my “10 Producer Picks” - outstanding NSW food producers.

If you’re heading along, come and say hello!

@chefmattmoran @marketbest @horizontalfestival

#HorizontalFestival #MaldonSalt #CulinaryStage #LyndeyMilan #FoodFestival #AustralianFood #CookingWithLyndey #mattmoran #marketbest #horizontalfestival

It was love at first bite in San Sebastián. 🇪🇸
There’s something about this city that stays with you, the food, the pintxos, the atmosphere and the distinctive Basque culture.
In Part 1 of my new blog, I’m sharing why San Sebastián has become such a favourite, along with some of the food and places that made an impression on me.
Read Why I Love San Sebastián (Part 1) via the link https://bit.ly/3Tr2X1r
And yes… there’s plenty more to come in Part 2. 😉
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#LyndeyMilan #TravelWithLyndey #SanSebastian #BasqueCountry #Pintxos #SpanishCuisine #FoodAndTravel #SpainTravel #TravelInspiration

🍇 A day of great food, wine & discovery

What a fantastic day at Grape, Grain & Graze at Sydney Showground!

There was so much to explore; to taste any of the wines, beers, ciders and distilled spirits from the recent Sydney Royal competitions including award winners, accompanied by wonderful Australian produce and Fine Food producers producers and wineries with stands, sharing their stories and their products.

I love discovering new ingredients, meeting the people behind them and, of course, tasting my way through an event like this! There were plenty of new favourites and lots of inspiration to take home.

What’s the best thing you discovered at Grape, Grain & Graze? 🍷🍴

#GrapeGrainAndGraze #AustralianProduce #FoodAndWine #AustralianFood #SydneyFood #FoodFestival #LyndeyMilan #FoodLovers #eataustralian

Fun, well-thought out delicious lunch @shorelinekitchenbar in the reimagined @adinahotels Darling Harbour. Orientation of hotel cleverly reversed to celebrate Darling Harbour, with @astw_inc colleagues & @travmedia founder my old friend @nwayland .

🎭 Wouldn’t it be loverly…

I went to see My Fair Lady at the Sydney Opera House and it certainly didn’t disappoint. It’s always been a favourite and I see it whenever it comes to Sydney. There’s something timeless about this much-loved musical, the music, the costumes, the wit and, of course, the wonderful world of Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins.

The staging, direction, singing and dancing were all superb. Wonderful to see old favourites Reg Livermore as Alfred P Doolittle, Robyn Nevin as Mrs Higgins and Tony Llewellyn-Jones as Colonel Pickering. Claire Lyon made a beautiful Eliza and Nathanliel Parker a suitably insensitive Professor Higgins. I am poring over the program as I write and to think I knew Bunty Turner as a food writer, long after she was Eliza in 1959. Now I can’t get “I could have danced all night” out of my mind. It was glorious. Have you seen My Fair Lady? What’s your favourite song? 🎶

#MyFairLady #MusicalTheatre #Theatre #LyndeyMilan #TheatreLovers #WouldntItBeLoverly

🎨🚇 Who says you need to visit a gallery to see great art?

I recently discovered another way to explore Sydney, through the public art installations across Sydney Metro stations.

The large scale artworks are inspired by the people, stories and landscape of Sydney, the stations themselves have become part of the city’s cultural landscape.

It’s a very different way to experience the Metro, and one that makes you stop, look up and notice what you might otherwise walk straight past.

I love discovering art in unexpected places, and this is definitely one for my Sydney list.

Have you ever taken a Metro journey specifically to see the art? 🚇🎨

#Sydney #SydneyMetro #PublicArt #SydneyArt #SydneyThingsToDo #ArtAndTravel #LyndeyMilan