Appellation restaurant has been tending to high-end Barossa diners – both locals and visitors from all over the world – for 15 years and has always delivered an exceptional regional food and wine experience.

So, where to next? In the past year it has had a major rejuvenation through a rebuild of its dining rooms, with the original outdoors porch with amazing vineyard vistas filled in to expand the dining room and more importantly expand the windows to those views. For now daylight saving months are best for evening dining though further landscaping will light a kitchen garden soon to be built in the foreground.

The changes also extend to the kitchen where young Dan Murphy has taken on with gusto the longstanding philosophy of celebrating Barossa and nearby regional produce in a smartly designed and sensitive menu that will delight meat eaters as much as vegetarians.

There’s a sense of expert playfulness in the dishes, all presented with elegantly artful plating, an accidental farmers cheese with pickled fig and butternut pumpkin, for instance, also charred cauliflower, sweetcorn cream, ice plant and toasted walnut. Nothing overworked, just tastefully creative and gastronomically engaging.

Appellation’s wine list is extensive with a focus on the Barossa, of course, and it too is being rebuilt. Restaurant service levels are supreme from greeting to farewell, intelligent and well humoured.

And there’s more: soon a more casual side to Appellation will open (late 2019) with a bar and separate kitchen offering for more everyday food and drinks. Local expectations are high.