PUBLIC INTEREST

Part bottle shop, part bistro, Public Wine Shop has plenty to recommend it, writes MICHAEL HARDEN.

- MICHAEL HARDEN

Melbourne has a long affinity with wine bars. Stalwarts like Jimmy Watson’s and the Florentino Cellar Bar have been around for close to a century and the city’s wine bar culture has been evolving ever since. The latest evolution, of which North Fitzroy’s Public Wine Shop is a prime example, is particularly exciting. Small, owner-operated and tightly focused, this new generation of wine bar-bottle shop hybrids has a magpie sensibility, grafting European and Japanese bar tropes onto a casual Australian attitude. The style might be relaxed and casual but the foundations are solid with experience and expertise with food lists as tightly considered as the booze.