Art & Wine Adventure At The D’Arenberg Cube
McLaren Vale, Adelaide, Australia
Last week I traveled back to my hometown of Adelaide, Australia to visit family and friends. It’s just a 3-hour flight to Adelaide from where we live in Perth.
Adelaide may be known as the city of churches, but no visit is complete without a visit to a winery or two. Surrounding Adelaide are many great wine regions including the Barossa Valley, the Adelaide Hills, and McLaren Vale.
I have spent many happy days roaming some of the 80 cellar doors of McLaren Vale and enjoying a cheese platter or lazy luncheon. But this year there was something new to discover — the d’Arenberg Cube. When I turned to Google to find a few new wineries to visit, I couldn’t escape the Cube, it seemed to be everyone I looked, the hottest trend in the region.
The d’Arenberg family has been growing vines in McLaren Vale since 1912, making them one of the region’s founding families. In 2017 they celebrated the opening of the Cube, a 5 story structure resembling a Rubik’s cube created by the imagination of the head winemaker at d’Arenberg, Chester Osborne.
The Cube houses a wine-tasting lounge on the top floor with stunning views over the surrounding vineyards, a restaurant, an art gallery, and an Alternate Reality museum on the ground floor.
At the moment the art gallery is featuring sculptures by Salvidor Dali, which is a great fit with the eclectic nature of the building.
As soon as you arrive you are greeted by two large green Dali sculptures at the entrance.
Entry to the Cube is $15 Australian per person, which at first seemed pricey, but the entry does include wine tasting of a flight of either six reds or whites. We also got a bonus tasting of a fortified Shiraz and Tawny Port. These days most of the wineries around McLaren Vale will charge for tastings, so we found that it was pretty good value — a visit to the Cube is truly an experience!
On entry to the ground floor, we stepped into the Alternate Realities museum which houses many little alcoves and displays of quirky art and sculpture, and a 360-degree video room. Below are just some of the artworks we discovered in the museum on our entry.
The sculpture below is created using roadwork cones and metals.
As we climbed the stairs to the second floor we discovered a gallery with views into the workings of the Cube kitchen that serves the restaurant on the third floor. The kitchen was a flurry of activity, with 3–4 chefs shuttling around the benches creating the lunch dishes. The gallery was filled with more eclectic artworks.
This second floor also contained the bathrooms of which the internal and external walls were covered from floor to ceiling with plastic greenery. The toilet stalls themselves are round and it can be a challenge to identify the doors amid the green! The men’s toilets have clown face sculptures on the urinal and the ladies’ wash basin was a sculpture of mirrors attached to large flowing tentacles.
As we journeyed upwards we found Polly’s restaurant on the third floor. It featured a collection of fun multi-colored chairs and a little wine bar at the entrance.
The fourth floor houses the art gallery which we didn’t choose to visit. It’s an additional $10 charge to enter the gallery.
We made our way directly to the top floor and the wine tasting room. On this floor, you can enjoy the many small outdoor balconies with great views over the vineyards and McLaren Vale.
You can also enjoy the views while enjoying the d’Arenberg wines at the central bar. The Cube entry ticket includes the guided tasting experience.
There are also several areas for group wine tastings around the outer corners of the room.
Although I’ve mentioned that we took the stairs to ascend the levels of the Cube, there is also an elevator if you prefer to ride. We took the elevator back to the ground floor and visited more of the museum sights as we made our way back out to the vineyard.
Pretty quirky artworks decorate every surface of the museum. Someone had a great time collecting these many oddities.
Although at first, the Cube seemed a little overhyped and very tourist-focused, we found that we enjoyed our experience. The Cube was certainly unique and fun, and a real exploration and adventure. Just a bit different from your typical cellar door winery tasting. It is well worth the visit if you ever find yourself in Adelaide!
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