Richmond

Abby Moret and Rabiya Oeztan met working together at a St Kilda ice-cream shop before opening this Church Street wine bar and bottle shop in March 2017. The two functions share one room: roughly 400 wines, mostly from smaller producers, line the retail side, while 24 by-the-glass pours rotate monthly through the bar, poured for anyone who wants to try before they buy a bottle to take home. Bottles are grouped by region and style — Rhône next to Chablis, a shelf of alternative varieties tagged simply "Chardy" — with Australian wines mixed in among their international counterparts rather than segregated off. A fireplace and a decorative globe hiding a whisky bottle give the room a lived-in, slightly eccentric feel that suits a neighbourhood spot more than a showroom. Charcuterie, cheese and antipasto plates are built to go with whatever's being poured. Open from midday daily, with the bar running past 9pm most nights and later on Fridays and Saturdays.

The original site in this Richmond florist group is given over to outdoor plants and edibles, making it a natural fit for garden-style wedding ceremonies. Venue hire runs alongside the plant offering, though the space closes over summer for event purposes. Enquiries can be made directly for those weighing up garden wedding venues in Melbourne.

Step through the door on Bridge Road and you're met not with a handful of familiar taps but with fridge after fridge organised by style — hazy IPAs beside crisp helles, sour gueuze near imperial stouts, Belgian tripels stacked against schwarzbier. This is a shop built by people who think about beer the way others think about wine: by region, by method, by yeast strain. The range runs deep rather than wide-and-shallow, pulling in small Australian brewers alongside imports from the US and Europe, so a curious drinker can move from a local pale ale to a Bavarian dunkel without leaving the aisle. It's a useful corrective to the idea that a bottle shop's job is simply to stock the biggest names — here the point is discovery, whether that's a barrel-aged barleywine, a low-alcohol session brew, or a gluten-free option that hasn't been an afterthought. With a second site in Surrey Hills, the operation has grown without losing its specialist edge: this remains a place for people who read labels, ask questions about hop varieties, and leave with something they hadn't planned on buying. For anyone serious about beer rather than just thirsty, it's essential.

Since opening on Bridge Road in 2010, this shop has built a name on cleanskins and limited releases sourced through direct relationships with family-owned vineyards, rather than the standard distributor run that stocks most suburban bottle shops. The range covers the expected reds, whites and sparkling alongside whisky, beer and cider, but the drawcard is the rotating selection of unlabelled or small-batch wines that regulars come back to check on. Bridge Road has lost plenty of independent retailers to bigger operators over the years; this one has held its ground through late opening hours — open until 9pm most nights, 10pm on weekends — that suit the strip's restaurant and bar crowd looking to grab something on the way past. A straightforward, well-run local cellar for anyone spending an evening in Richmond.