Carlton

Brothers Paul and Fabian Tasca opened this Lygon Street wine shop in 2008, drawing on a family background in licensed grocery to build a list that runs roughly seventy percent Australian, filled out with Italian and other European labels suited to the neighbourhood's trattorias. Every bottle on the shelf has been tasted by the brothers before it's stocked, a habit that has let the shop track shifting tastes closely — its natural and pet-nat section has grown from a handful of bottles to sixty or seventy styles as younger drinkers have sought them out. Paul Tasca describes the social side of the trade, the friendships built over counter conversations, as his favourite part of the job. Sitting in the middle of Carlton's Little Italy strip, the shop has become a fixture for locals ordering for dinner parties and for regulars who call ahead knowing they'll get a fair price. Open seven days, with extended hours on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

Open since 2003 on Carlton's Elgin Street, Make stocks around 4,000 products across 150-plus brands — Scandinavian heavyweights alongside Australian designers like Susan Cohn and Steven Blaess. Director Pat Coppel's selection criteria is deliberately unsentimental: provenance is irrelevant; the object either works — aesthetically, functionally, environmentally — or it doesn't.

Dot and Ross Reading opened the first store on Lygon Street, Carlton, in 1969 — partly bankrolled by Dot's teaching wage, shelves occasionally restocked from their home library. Mark Rubbo bought the business in 1976 and has steered it ever since, earning an OAM for his role in Australian literary life. Nine Melbourne locations now; the Carlton flagship, in a former Commonwealth Bank building, remains the anchor.