Though Blue Hill restaurant and Hewitson winery are on opposite ends of the globe-one in southern Manhattan, the other in southern Australia-they have a lot in common. Dean Hewitson creates his excellent wines using old vines cultivated by experienced farmers. As he puts it with characteristic bluntness, "Most of these old buggers are fifth- or sixth-generation growers, and what they don't know about their vines isn't worth squat." Blue Hill co-chefs Dan Barber and Alex Urena may be loath to describe their contacts as "old buggers," but they have nonetheless cultivated close relationships with farmers in the Hudson Valley. Moreover, Blue Hill Farm in the Berkshires, which once belonged to Barber's grandmother and for which the restaurant is named, also provides much of the produce used in the restaurant's kitchens.

Barber, Urena, and Hewitson share other traits, too-drive, passion, ability, and impressive credentials. New York Times critic William Grimes described the cooking at Blue Hill as "inventive and highly assured." The food, he continued, is "refined without being fussy, harmoniously structured and deftly handled." Meanwhile, across the world and Down Under, GQ's Nick Ryan praised Hewitson's "considerable winemaking skills....This man has a passion for wine and he likes to share it." For this very special evening, John Larchet of The Australian Premium Wine Collection, a man who knows a thing or two about pairing, has matched up these two ambitious, accomplished chefs with an equally talented vintner.

Hewitson is a graduate of Australia's premier winemaking institution, Roseworthy Agricultural College, and holds a master's degree from the University of California at Davis. He spent a decade at the prestigious Petaluma winery working under Brian Croser, a leading Australian winemaker, before starting his own label. Ryan described Hewitson's first release, the 1996 L'Oizeau Shiraz, as "robustly powerful yet surprisingly elegant." And according to Robert Parker, Hewitson's 1997 Mourvëdre Old Garden is "impressively long, well-balanced and loaded with character."

Barber and Urena met in the kitchens of the celebrated Bouley. Urena had previously worked at the River CafÈ under Charlie Palmer and was subsequently opening sous-chef at Bouley Bakery. In 1998, Urena began an extended tour of Europe, where he staged at two Michelin three-star establishments, Jardin de Sense in Montpellier, France, and El Bulli under the wildly inventive Ferran Adrìa, in Costa Brava, Spain. Barber, too, spent time in France, in his case at the venerable Michel Rostang and Apicius, both in Paris. In 1996 he launched Dan Barber Catering, which was included as a Rising Star in a New York magazine story on the city's top caterers. Urena and Barber opened Blue Hill in a modest townhouse off Washington Square this past spring; the pair make a formidable team. In not much more than six months, their "cutting-edge contemporary American cuisine" (Daniel Young, Daily News) has won them many fans and much acclaim.

John Larchet was certain that if American oenophiles were introduced to lesser-known Australian wines, acclaim and fans would come their way, too. He shaped his Australian Premium Wine Collection to showcase the best of Australian wines in terms of varietal expression, regional distinctiveness, and individual winemakers. The collection includes more than 40 wines from 18 producers in 17 different growing regions.