Sydney and Melbourne's best wine bars
Melbourne is famed for its wine bars, but with Sydney's long overdue revamp of its archaic licensing laws, diversity and cutting edge venues are abounding in both towns.
By Chris Morrison
Ten years since relaxing liquor laws, Melbourne operators have a
risk culture Sydney is still striving toward. Sydney has always had an
obsession with fame and we're prone to elevating the ordinary to the
extraordinary with little evidence. Bar tsars and celebrity chefs do
wonders for their own careers but little for the cities that helped
make them famous.
Melbourne has embraced smaller venues and turned localism into a
groundswell that wine drinkers love and Sydney, thankfully, is now
embracing.
The back alleys and laneways of Melbourne's CBD are like an urban
Disneyland with every unmarked doorway a possible gateway into wine
Valhalla. The Deanery has over 35 wines by the glass with
varieties from all over the world. It plays to the Melburnian trait of
hitting four or five bars in an evening with a glass of wine and a
small course at each. Syracuse Wine Bar and Restaurant is all
moody French influences and has some of the most knowledgeable staff
around - a refreshing change from Sydney's too-often Top 40 wine lists.
MoVida Next Door is the little sister to all-star tapas bar Movida and recently opened with a completely Spanish regional wine list and a focus on great sherry.
But while Melbourne has the wood on Sydney with numbers of venues, that doesn't necessarily extend to quality.
Darlinghurst's Time to Vino and Number 1 Wine Bar in
Circular Quay are the prototypes to what we hope will be a wave of
small wine bars run by street-smart and experienced operators like
Clint Hillary and Tony Bilson respectively.
Bambini Wine Room still sets the standard for elegance and Bondi's
hole-in-the-wall Shop and Wine Bar defies the tourist trap, offering a
genuine and knowledgeable wine experience, not to mention natty
wallpaper.
For 10 years Wine Banq in the city has been serving serious quality wine and great jazz, a tradition that happily continues today while Vini in Surry Hills does its Italian parentage proud with classic regional offerings by glass.
The Deanery 13 Bligh Pl, Melbourne 3000 (03 9629 5599).
Syracuse 23 Bank Pl, Melbourne 3000 (03 9670 1777).
MoVida Next Door 164 Flinders St, Melbourne 3000 (03 9663 3038).
Time to Vino 66 Stanley St, Darlinghurst, 2010 (02 9380 4252).
Number 1 Wine Bar 1 Alfred St, Sydney 2000 (02 8252 9296).
Bambini Wine Room 185-187 Elizabeth St, Sydney, 2000 (02 9283 7098).
Shop and Wine Bar 78 Curlewis St, Bondi 2026. (02 9365 2600).
Wine Banq 53 Martin Place, Sydney 2000 (02 9222 1919).
Vini 3/118 Devonshire St, Surry Hills 2010 (02 9698 5131).