The quintessential drink-and-dine-in wine shop, the City Wine Shop was integral to shaping Melbourne’s wine-loving reputation, and it continues to be just as relevant today. You can eat and drink very well here, or pick at some simple plates and have a glass or two, or simply have a beer at the outdoor tables in this most European corner of Melbourne.
If you’re taking a bottle home, just next door is the sibling Spring Street Grocer, where you can pick up stunning cheese and premium grocery items, along with gelato to go.
Oddly, with a few notable exceptions, it took a surprisingly long time for this successful model to catch on more broadly, but catch on it did. The City Wine Shop, though, remains the reference point, the platonic ideal of Melbourne’s casual wine revolution. Indeed, it’s hard to overestimate the importance of the City Wine Shop, with alumni fanning out into making, selling, importing, writing about and judging wine in a variety of interesting and influential ways.
The wine offer runs to some 1,200 lines, with many on display on the wine wall and in the fridges, though some with heftier price tags slumber in the sliver of cellar that runs adjacent to the vast, sunken communal table that runs the length of the back room. The by-the-glass selection tops out at about 25, with featured bottles set into one of the recessed shelves in the olive-green tiled back bar. Changes are made to both lists in a ever-evolving way, typically daily.
Today, the City Wine Shop would be entirely familiar to anyone who walked through the doors 17 years ago and not since. Everything remains in its place, friendly black-clad staff, hand-chalked specials, and even classic menu items like the schnitzel and tuna niçoise remain unchanged, but not out of habit, simply because they have endured well, just like the timeless interior.
At Geralds, the early arrivals dictate the open bottles, which can be switched around once exhausted, with ten typically open at any one time.
Old Palm Liquor is the younger Lygon Street sibling of the already iconic Neighbourhood Wine. Opening in 2013, and expressly reflecting it’s anchoring in the local area, Simon Denman and Almay Jordaan’s Neighbourhood Wine has also become a destination for those further afield, drawn by Jordaan’s Euro-leaning menu and the vast collection of minimal-intervention wine…
Up a flight of stairs above long-term wood-fired pizza player Woodstock in Fitzroy North, Neighbourhood Wine occupies a site of both individual charm and somewhat dubious history. Before Simon Denman and partner and chef Almay Jordaan took possession of the first-floor title that stretches over two shopfronts, it had remained idle for a quarter of…
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