Circl Wine House

Overview

If you hit up a Melbourne restaurant and find ten wines offered by the glass, you're doing alright. If you get 20, you're in for a real treat. But Circl Wine House in Melbourne's CBD is doing what few hospo venues can by offering a whopping 150 drops by the glass and 1500 by the bottle.

This is hugely important to the owners, who created this Melbourne wine bar to help foster a new culture around vino — one built around accessibility, inclusivity and discovery. One way to help people explore heaps of new and rare wines is to offer them by the glass. No need to worry about trying something new, only to find you hate it after spending hundreds of dollars on an entire bottle.

But that's not the only way to help people sample hard-to-find drops. The Circl crew is taking it one step further by pouring one extremely rare wine each week. These drops are limited to 75ml per person, to ensure everyone gets a go. Spanning Australian and international vineyards, the selection will be highly curated, and feature the likes of Coche Dury, Roulot, DRC, and old vintages from top producers in Australia.

Head Sommelier and Venue Manager Xavier Vigier shares, "At Circl, we really want to bring our guests wines they've never heard of before. There's a new market and audience in wine that we're very much conscious of."

"We will challenge the status quo by offering rare and allocated wines by the glass to allow anyone the chance to try wines they otherwise wouldn't be able to reach. It also provides the chance to have a glass rather than committing to the full bottle."

Wine is most certainly the star of the show at Circl, but food is far from neglected. Executive Chef Elias Salomonsson (ex-Scott Pickett Group and Vue Group) has created a Euro-centric menu of small and large dishes that are strongly influenced by his Scandinavian background. They are also pretty luxe bites.

You can start off with Sydney Rock oysters and caviar service (if your budget allows), or opt for more complex bites like the smoked eel tart, goat's cheese eclair, arrowhead squid with nduja, morcilla and celeriac, and tuna crudo with Yarra Valley caviar (yes, you know it's a fancy spot when caviar is scattered all over the menu).

And it makes a whole lot of sense when you consider the fact that Circl boasts one of the biggest champagne selections in Australia, with 135 bottles available at any time.

You'll be sipping and snacking all this within newly designed digs, dreamt up by MARCH.STUDIO (Baker D. Chirico and Lucy Liu). Downstairs, you'll find the main dining room and bar, which features natural timber finishes and polished concrete floors. It's all kept quite minimalist, championing a less-is-more aesthetic.

But the top spot to sit has got to be upstairs by the room-length glass-encased wine cellar. Watch on as the sommeliers move around this space, picking and choosing rare wines throughout the night.