Your guide to Australian craft spirits & Melbourne's cocktail culture
For the uninitiated, vermouth is simply wine that has been fortified with spirits and flavoured with botanicals. And Maidenii is one of Australia’s premier vermouth-makers. The brains behind the label – bartender Shaun Byrne and winemaker Gilles Lapalus – have collaborated on a new labour of love in the form […]
Tried all the new bars in town yet? Here’s your hit list for July. Heroes Smoke from the grill only adds to the ‘den of inequity’ vibe at this new multi-level bar strung with Chinese New Year paraphernalia and papered with old music posters. Go up to reach the all-important […]
Here are the top 10 drinkable things to do around Melbourne this July… — Mont Plonk Melbourne Public’s terrace has transformed into Mont Plonk (pictured above) for the winter. The cosy pop-up bar is an apres ski experience complete with open fires, mulled wine, spiked hot chocolate, shot-skis, vodka luge […]
Truffle season has arrived (go see our homegirl, The Prosecco Queen, at the Truffle Melbourne Festival this weekend where her Van di Vino will be slinging Truffled Spritzes and Truffled Bloody Marys). Some people “get” the fuss over truffles. Some don’t. As avowed professional gluttons we’re in the former camp. And so […]
This weekend is for roaring fires, huddling in blankets and – with the welcome return of World Gin Day tomorrow – hot gin cocktails. Bass & Flinders Distillery have just released their seasonally spiced Winter Gin, spiked with apple brandy, and have kindly shared with us the secret to their Hot Buttered […]
We’ve got fancy gins, award-winning bars and boozy recipe books to add to your collection this month… The Noble Bootleggers Distilling Co (out of The Noble Experiment bar) now have an online store from which you can purchase their experimental gins and aged bottled cocktails. The Cliveden has released its […]
Other adventures were calling, so we haven’t done this in quite a while! Let’s catch up now on all the new and new-look bars, distilleries and other assorted boozeries that have flung open their doors over the past few months. — Bouzy A chic wine bar from the Entrecote team. In their own […]
Saturday 9th June is World Gin Day. For no other reason than to celebrate the not-so-humble juniper spirit, let’s run down all the WGD festivities on around Melbourne… 1. The Craft & Co debuts its first Gin Night Market where you can taste more than a dozen Australian and New […]
Over 120 local bars are celebrating, that bartender’s old faithful, the Negroni this week. Each will present the original, a twist or even fully-fledged menu of Negronis (with $1 or more of each cocktail sold going to the bar’s chosen cause!) We’ve scoured the Negroni Week 2018 program to let […]
Here are the top 10 drinkable things to do in Melbourne this June… Scents of Place Gin Palace debuts gin lunches as a celebration of Australian botanicals. Very rare tickets are still available for June’s events doing double duty for Good Food Month featuring the distilleries Southern Wild, Alchemy and […]