Wine Bars with Excellent By-the-Glass Lists to Slowly Work Through
Wine bars across Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide where the by-the-glass list gets treated as seriously as the bottle list.
A by-the-glass list is small by necessity — every open bottle is a business bet proved one pour at a time — so what makes the cut says more about a venue than its full bottle list ever will. The lazy version fills those slots with whatever's cheapest to risk wasting. The good version uses them to put something genuinely interesting in front of someone who's only committing to one glass — the kind of bottle you'd otherwise save for a special occasion, poured out instead of rationed.
In Brisbane, Wineology hands you the pour button yourself — 100 wines sit ready to taste in self-serve machines that keep each bottle fresh, so you can pour yourself a taster or full glass before deciding whether the bottle's coming home with you too, straight off the retail shelf. In Melbourne, Circl Wine House puts 150 of its 1,500-bottle list by the glass, including 135 champagnes on rotation. Sydney's Vini Divini stocks a 1,000-bottle wine wall across ten countries, curated by former Rockpool Dining Group sommelier Raphael Mulligan, with one of the city's largest by-the-glass lists to match. And in Adelaide, Leigh Street Wine Room pours from more than 400 natural and minimal-intervention drops inside a room modelled on the wine bars of Europe. Presented by Honda ZR-V, here are twelve wine bars where every glass on the list was thoughtfully selected.
Read other guides in our A to Z with Honda ZR-V series:
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BarLeigh Street Wine Room
9 Leigh Street, Adelaide
Over 400 natural wines run through this multi-level room, from ground-floor bar seats up to a mezzanine of communal tables, small plates running to pig’s head fritti.
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BarLa Lune Wine Co
109 Melbourne Street, South Brisbane
This Fish Lane bar pours premium bottles by the glass from a French-leaning list that stretches to Australia, poured over reclaimed French oak tables with plenty of candlelight.
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BarCru Bar + Cellar
22 James Street, Fortitude Valley
Its award-winning list runs deep rather than trendy across Australian and international producers, backed by a bottle shop with free weekly tastings, in a James Street room built for long, slow nights.
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BarVini Divini
60 Carrington Street, Sydney
A 1,000-bottle wine wall backs one of the city’s biggest by-the-glass lists, ten regions deep from France to Armenia, poured by the glass from $12 in a stripped-back room near Wynyard.
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BarPaski Vineria Popolare
239 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst
Rare Italian bottles are organised by winemaker rather than region at this two-storey Darlinghurst spot, a 25-seat bar downstairs and a 40-seat dining room upstairs, both built around the same list.
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BarClaret Club
77 Stanley Street, Darlinghurst
The two sommelier-owners cocktails entirely, pouring straight from their own cellars, a rotating 30 glasses that feed into an expanding list of about 800 bottles spanning Bordeaux to Burgundy.
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RestaurantLittle House Wine Bar
98 Smith Street, Collingwood
Sommelier Chris Winter, formerly of Gordon Ramsay’s London kitchens, keeps the list deliberately concise in this Collingwood room, built around a produce-first, minimal-waste menu.
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BarGracie's Wine Room
27 Toorak Road, South Yarra
This Edwardian South Yarra room pours its own Viognier-based house wine alongside an approachable list, best drunk in the courtyard with a plate of focaccia.
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BarCircl Wine House
22 Punch Lane, Melbourne
150 wines by the glass and one of the country’s biggest champagne lists sit behind a glass-walled cellar upstairs, where a weekly rotation pours rarities like Coche-Dury and DRC in 75ml tastes.
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This guide was produced in partnership with Honda ZR-V. To learn more about the ultimate car for urban discovery, click here.