Melbourne doesn’t do things quietly, and its wine bars are no exception. Think places where you sit down at 6pm, blink, and somehow it’s midnight and you’re deep into a second bottle of something orange you can’t pronounce but absolutely love. From the CBD’s laneway gems to Malvern’s best-kept suburban secret, here’s where to drink wine in this city and actually mean it.
Best Wine Bars in Melbourne CBD
📍 194 Little Collins St, Melbourne CBD
Bijou is small, walk-ins only, and slightly conspiratorial in the best way. Floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with boutique bottles are the backdrop — every wine on the shelf is available to drink in, with corkage, which means the list is essentially unlimited. The staff tell you the story behind every pour like they personally know the winemaker (some of them do). You walk in after a brutal Friday and the city noise genuinely disappears. It’s unsettling how well it works.
People bring first dates here. People bring people they’ve known for twenty years here. Bijou doesn’t care — it just makes everyone feel like they made the right call. Open until 1am seven nights, which is either excellent or dangerous depending on your Thursday morning commitments.
📍 22 Punch Lane, Melbourne CBD
Circl does something very few wine bars attempt: 150 wines available by the glass, including bottles that would normally require a full commitment. The idea is simple — try the rare and allocated stuff without spending hundreds on a bottle you might not finish. One-hat rated by the Good Food Guide within months of opening, Circl operates across two levels with a glass-encased wine cellar running the length of the upstairs room, 1,500 bottles deep.
The Scandinavian-influenced food menu holds its own — think Nordic technique applied to local produce — but wine is the reason you’re here. Polished concrete floors, red leather seats, and a room that takes itself just seriously enough without making you feel underdressed for ordering a second glass.
📍 159 Spring St, Melbourne CBD
City Wine Shop has been shaping Melbourne’s wine-drinking habits since 2004 — one of the first enoteca-style venues in the city, and still the reference point that everything else is measured against. The walls are lined with bottles, and you can take any of them home at bottle-shop prices, or pay $25 corkage to drink them right there. The menu runs European bistro — chicken schnitzel, steak tartare, spaghetti marinara — and the view across to Parliament House through the Spring Street windows has been the backdrop for a lot of very good evenings.
Walk-ins only. Perched right next to The European and Melbourne Supper Club. The kind of place that turns first-timers into regulars in a single sitting.
4. Embla
📍 122 Russell St, Melbourne CBD
Embla smells like a woodfire the moment you open the door. It’s tight inside, the conversations are loose, and the wine list — curated with French natural wine expert Eric Narioo and winemaker Patrick Sullivan — runs from Spanish cava to Mornington Peninsula pours that rarely make it beyond the maker and a few of their mates. Chef Dave Verheul’s small plates are built around the wood oven and a fermenting program that most restaurants wouldn’t attempt. The staff will recommend based on the mood at your table tonight, not what’s been selling.
If someone in Melbourne tells you to go to one wine bar, it’s probably Embla. That’s not a coincidence. They keep most of the room free for walk-ins, which is either very generous or a good reason to arrive early.
📍 Corner Hardware Lane & Little Bourke St, Melbourne CBD
Kirk’s sits on the corner of Hardware Lane and Little Bourke Street in a historic building that was once one of Melbourne’s earliest pubs — the Kirk’s Bazaar Hotel. The glow from inside reaches the street. Chalkboard menu. Parisian-style outdoor tables. The list is built on European terroir — Sancerre, Muscadet, Nebbiolo, Chianti Classico — alongside Australian bottles that hold their own without apology. The bistro menu runs oysters, charcuterie and pâté boards all day, specifically to make the wine taste better. Mission accomplished.
Walk-ins only, noon until late, Monday to Saturday. Locals describe going to Kirk’s like getting a history lesson from someone who makes it genuinely interesting. You leave knowing more than when you arrived and somehow feeling cooler for it.
📍 15 Warburton Lane, Melbourne CBD
Hidden down Warburton Lane in the CBD, Myrtle is doing something specific: an exclusively Australian wine list, paired with food built from native produce. Every bottle is hand-picked by the head sommelier, and the focus is on showcasing the variety of what this country actually makes — from cooler-climate Victorian producers to Western Australian estates to the small makers doing interesting things with grapes that don’t get enough attention. LPs spin all day. The space is rustic and two-storey with arched brick doorways that feel pulled from a Florentine laneway.
The chocolate soufflé with Davidson plum ice cream has no business being this good in a wine bar. Staff will happily go deep on soil types if you let them. The Australian wine bar Melbourne needed, tucked where you’d least expect it.
7. V Wine Salon
📍 Ground floor, Donkey Wheel House, 673 Bourke St, Melbourne CBD
V Wine Salon is inside a heritage-listed building on Bourke Street with high ceilings, cosy seating, and a Paris-by-night atmosphere that the décor earns rather than performs. Co-founder Vianney Establet is a fifth-generation Bordeaux winemaker who honed his craft at Vue de Monde before opening V first in Abbotsford, then landing in the CBD permanently. The wine list has been awarded two glasses at Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards. Monthly masterclasses and producer events run regularly for anyone who wants to go deeper.
Wine flights, by-the-glass, retail take-home — V makes the whole experience accessible without dumbing it down. The cheese and charcuterie are French-sourced and genuinely good. The kind of bar that turns one visit into a standing appointment.
📍 1 Flinders Lane, Melbourne CBD
Vinesmith is the CBD cellar door for Blue Pyrenees Estate and Glenlofty Estate — two wineries in the Pyrenees and Grampians wine regions — which means tasting here is a direct line to the people making the bottles. Guided tastings walk you through the range in a genuine way: old oak versus new oak, what fermentation does to texture, why a cool-climate Pyrenees Riesling tastes different from anything grown in the Hunter. The French-inspired bistro menu is built to complement the wine, not compete with it, and the whole operation runs up a flight of stairs in a Flinders Lane building that rewards the effort.
Vinesmith is where curious drinkers become people with actual opinions about Australian wine. That’s the whole point of it being here.
Best Wine Bars in South Melbourne
📍 181 Bank St, South Melbourne
Bellota is the drink-in extension of the Prince Wine Store next door — which means access to over 3,500 bottles at bottle-shop prices plus $20 corkage, with an ever-changing selection also available by the glass, taste, or half-carafe. The space is a classic Victorian building with a small marble bar, a light-filled courtyard, and a menu that runs genuinely European: spaghetti carbonara, French onion soup, braised duck leg, freshly shucked oysters from the raw bar. The tiled floor and old-world texture make it feel like you’ve stumbled into a Parisian side street somewhere between Bank Street and somewhere coastal.
Regulars treat Bellota like a weeknight ritual — show up when the week has been heavy, leave feeling like you spent three days somewhere coastal. Open Tuesday to Saturday from midday. The sparkling whites and oyster combination gets raved about so consistently it’s almost embarrassing for the competition.
📍 2/274-278 Coventry St, South Melbourne
Le Pont sits around the corner from South Melbourne Market with a broad and eclectic range of wines, artisanal spirits, and craft beers from around the world — and an indoor/outdoor bar where you can sit and work through the team’s latest favourites or treat yourself to something from the Coravin list. The philosophy here is French-inspired: wines from the great regions, but Italy, New Zealand, and Spain all represented, nothing on the shelf simply because it’s in fashion or received a high score. Masterclasses run regularly for anyone who wants to go deeper.
What keeps people coming back isn’t just the wine — it’s the energy of a room full of people who came in stressed and left completely different humans. Someone called it a ‘decompression chamber with better drinks than a day spa.’ That’s Le Pont.
Best Wine Bars in South Yarra
📍 Toorak Road, South Yarra
Gracie’s Wine Room has one of the better origin stories in Melbourne hospitality. Founder Kelsie Gaffey documented the entire DIY build on TikTok — laying bricks, filling wine shelves, learning as she went — and by the time the doors opened, the bar already had a cult following that hadn’t tasted a single glass. Named after her grandmother, Gracie, the venue is inside an Edwardian building on Toorak Road with a large timber bar, a turntable spinning records, and a leafy sun-drenched courtyard that is one of the prettier places to drink in Melbourne.
The wine list leans Australian with Provence rosé in the mix. Orange wines are a crowd favourite. Lobster rolls, house-baked focaccia with stracciatella and hot honey, freshly shucked oysters — the food earns its place rather than just filling space. DJ sets transition the room from afternoon to night. Strangers become friends here at a rate that should probably be studied.
Best Wine Bars in Carlton North
📍 50 Princes St, Carlton North
The Wine Corner Store opened in 2016 on Princes Street opposite Canning Street’s lush median strip, and has been the neighbourhood’s favourite retreat ever since. Owner Steve Mifsud modelled it on the corner stores of his Sydney childhood — the kind of place where neighbours drop by and everyone knows everyone — except here the bread and milk got swapped for hundreds of wines from family-run vineyards, Austrian and Italian bottles, and a rotating menu of seasonal bar snacks that might run from kangaroo skewers to Korean fried chicken depending on what’s fresh.
Regulars here have conversations that turn into bottle recommendations that turn into very long Friday nights. Newcomers always mention how comfortable they felt immediately. The Wine Corner Store is the kind of place that quietly becomes part of your week. Wine here is joyful. That’s the whole point.
Best Wine Bars in Collingwood
📍 28A Stanley St, Collingwood
Owner Lyndon Kubis — the same person behind Milton Wine Shop and Toorak Wine Cellars — opened The Moon in 2017 as his northside venture, and it shows his eye for what makes a wine bar actually work. Over 400 wines on the list, 20 rotating by-the-glass options, a focus on small producers who let provenance speak for itself rather than process. The space is minimal and moody: polished stone, stained wood, solar eclipse wall lights, and dim booths in the back that become their own little world. Dogs are welcome in the outdoor patio.
Guests consistently say the same thing about The Moon: they planned to stay for one, ended up staying for four, and the conversation was so good they barely noticed. The wine helped. The 400 options definitely helped.
Best Wine Bars in Fitzroy North
14. Bar Liberty
📍 234 Johnston St, Fitzroy
Bar Liberty looks like the kind of place that takes itself seriously — hardwood floors, considered interior, the sort of calm that suggests the kitchen knows exactly what it’s doing. And it does. One Good Food Guide hat and counting. The wine list runs macerated whites, large formats, and esoteric drops you won’t find elsewhere, divided by style rather than region. Behind the main bar is Drinkwell, the courtyard bar that functions as their version of a beer garden. Upstairs, a private dining room seats 20.
The food doesn’t try to compete with the wine — it makes the wine taste even better. Sunday lunch is $45 per person for eight share dishes, including the XO pippies with Chinese doughnut that gets mentioned in almost every review. Ask anyone who’s been: Bar Liberty is where modern Australian wine culture actually lives.
15. Marion Wine Bar
📍 51-53 Gertrude St, Fitzroy
Marion is Andrew McConnell’s wine bar on Gertrude Street, and it earns the McConnell pedigree without leaning on it. Spanning two shopfronts next door to Cutler & Co, the space runs whitewashed brick walls, ceiling-high wine racks, and a floor that hasn’t been touched since the building’s days as a metal plating factory. The wine list — shared with the Cutler & Co cellar and directed by sommelier Penny Vine — runs to around 600 bins, with 20-plus by-the-glass options that change constantly as bottles get opened out of interest rather than commercial necessity. Wines come in 100ml and 150ml pours, which is the right call.
The open kitchen produces seasonal small plates — mussels with spicy nduja, freshwater crayfish in miso butter — and the 5 Chef’s Selection menu for groups is the best way to surrender control and let them feed you. Open seven days from noon. Ranked #6 of all restaurants in Fitzroy on TripAdvisor, which is the kind of number that accumulates from years of getting it right.
📍 1 Reid St, Fitzroy North
Up a flight of stairs above a wood-fired pizza place in Fitzroy North is a bar occupying a first-floor space with a genuinely unusual history — before Simon Denman and chef Almay Jordaan took it over, it was a gangster’s gentlemen’s club. The roulette wheel is gone. In its place: antique wood finishes, 70s jazz and blues records on a turntable, over 550 wines stacked on open wrought-iron shelving, and a kitchen that runs Sunday roasts and bottomless long lunches with the kind of hospitality that makes you forget you had plans.
The wine list has a particular focus on the Jura and artisan producers making small quantities with ethical practices. The Sunday roast and bottomless house wine deal is one of the better kept secrets on the northside. You will stay a bit longer than you planned. The second bottle is a foregone conclusion.
17. Public Wine Shop
📍 179 St Georges Rd, Fitzroy North
Public Wine Shop runs on a single-minded principle: everything on the list comes from organic vineyards, all the drinks contain nothing but fermented fruit, and the rotating by-the-glass selection changes every day. Owner Campbell Burton imports many of the offerings himself, which means the list has personality that most bars can’t replicate. Cloudy whites, juicy chilled reds, regions you’ve never heard of — and a kitchen from Ali Currey-Voumard that makes the food worth ordering in its own right.
Regulars say it strips the pretension out of natural wine and replaces it with genuine enthusiasm. That’s the hardest thing to pull off in this category. Go for one glass. Stay for the education. Leave with a bottle you’ll think about for weeks.
Best Wine Bars in Richmond
📍 138 Bridge Rd, Richmond
Annie Lewis Winehouse is a hybrid wine bar and bottle shop on Bridge Road — the kind of place where the cheese and charcuterie boards are taken seriously, the staff are happy to guide you through the list or leave you to explore it, and anything you love can walk out the door with you. Classic and new-school wines sit alongside each other, available by the glass or bottle. Board games on the tables. Dogs welcome. Walk-ins welcome.
This is the Melbourne neighbourhood bar done properly — the one that rated 5 stars from people who came back three nights in a row. Open Tuesday through Sunday from 3pm. Strangers become regulars here faster than almost anywhere else on this list.
19. Our Terroir
📍 281 Bridge Rd, Richmond
Our Terroir limits the room to 30 guests at any one time, which tells you everything about how seriously they take the experience. Six temperature zones for by-the-glass, Coravin, and decanted wines. An entire page of nine Negroni variants. Charcuterie smoked and cured in-house out the back. The wine list covers both iconic classics and the genuinely obscure, representing producers they believe in. When a bottle of 25-plus wine reaches its last glass, you choose what gets opened next.
Regular blind tastings, winemaker events, and a team who treat wine education as a pleasure rather than a performance. Our Terroir turns curious drinkers into people with real opinions.
Best Wine Bars in Malvern
20. Milton Wine Shop
📍 1427 Malvern Rd, Malvern
Milton has been on Malvern Road since 2014, founded by Lyndon Kubis and Mark Nelson with a simple idea: a neighbourhood wine bar with no wine snobbery allowed. The tram stops right out front. Inside, a traditional terrace splits across three spaces — the bottle shop, a fireplace-lit living room with old armchairs, and a heated courtyard. The wine list skews old and new world with a particular lean toward Italy, alongside France, Austria, and Australian natural drops. Wood-fired pizza on weeknights. The Sunday gas spit in the courtyard has turned out whole lambs.
Locals here will tell you Milton turned them onto an Alto Piemonte or an Austrian Grüner Veltliner like it was nothing. Sommeliers apparently find it suspicious that something this good exists this far from the city. We just think Malvern got lucky.
Your Next Round Is Calling — Melbourne’s Bars Are Waiting
Here’s the honest truth about Melbourne’s wine bar scene: you could commit to one new bar a week and still have more on your list after a month. That’s not a complaint — that’s the city doing its job. Whether it’s The Moon’s 400-bottle list in Collingwood, the barely-legal food-and-wine combinations at Bar Liberty, or Kirk’s laneway pulling you in off the street like you had no choice in the matter, every bar on this list has earned it.
FAQ
What are the best wine bars in Melbourne CBD?
Embla for discovery and woodfire atmosphere, Kirk’s for a timeless European laneway experience, City Wine Shop for classic icons, Bijou for date nights that actually feel special, and V Wine Salon when you want something quieter and more precise.
Where are the best wine bars in Fitzroy?
Bar Liberty for serious food-and-wine pairing, Neighbourhood Wine upstairs when you want the cosy, second-bottle-on-the-couch energy. Honestly, visit both on the same night if you can manage it.
Which Melbourne wine bars are best for a date night?
Bijou first, no contest — private booths, intimate, European charm that does a lot of the heavy lifting. Bellota near Albert Park Lake for something warmer and more convivial. Gracie’s or Kirk’s if you want the kind of setting that makes the other person think you have excellent taste (you do).
Which wine bars in Melbourne are best for learning about Australian wine?
Vinesmith City Cellar Door and Myrtle Wine Bar both champion local producers and have staff who love talking about the wine properly — not in a lecture way, in a genuinely enthusiastic way. Melbourne Winery is the most accessible starting point if you’re newer to it.
