Milton Wine opened quietly in June of 2014, but it’s now causing quite the stir in sleepy Malvern. A wine cellar in a terrace house sounds better suited to the leafy back streets of Fitzroy or East Brunswick, but Milton Wine is smack, bang in the middle of the high-priced burbs.
The tram stops right out front, casually ushering you into a library of wines from Australia and Europe (with a bit of a skew towards Italy), not forgetting some natural and biodynamic examples currently making a splash in the Melbourne wine scene. The prices on the walls are indicative of the cost to drink-in; if you’re filling up your own cellar, knock $15 off each bottle.
If you’d rather not sit in the shop while enjoying a glass, there’s a curious room to the side with a Victorian fireplace and some old armchairs next to a very modern wine fridge. There’s an abundance of outdoor seating in their courtyard near the gas spit, which is usually fired up on Sundays and has flame-licked pigs and lambs alike. Oak trees hang from neighbouring properties so you feel like you’re in someone’s backyard.
A curious feature of the courtyard is Milton Wine’s own working basket press –used to extract juice from crushed grapes, which owners Mark Nelson and Lyndon Kubis plan to do in the near future. For now, the press is just decoration, like the dried-up water fountain that gives the outside a share-house feel.
Milton Wine have cleverly enlisted Gary Mills of Jamsheed Wines in the Yarra to make a easy-drinking white blend of roussane, riesling and chardonnay tailored for Milton at $10 a glass. Throw it back with a $23 cheese plate and you’ve got yourself a casual weeknight. Feeling a little more adventurous? You won’t go astray with a glass of Laherte Freres Champagne blanc de blanc for $22 a glass and an off-menu roulette jaffle, which you can ask them to make with whatever they have. Fillings are the meat they’re slicing and house cheese, regularly rotated. For alternatives to a toasted sandwich, there’s gravlax, vitello tonnato and a daily terrine. If you’ve got a serious hole in your stomach, you can call in orders from Pizza Gallery further down the hill.
Milton Wine is giving a breath of life to a suburb-straddling street better known for art, expensive furniture and run-of-the-mill cafés. It’s yet another reason to head south.