BAR HEATHER

This small Byron-meets-Paris wine bar boasts some big names and some even bigger flavours, writes TRISTAN LUTZE.

- TRISTAN LUTZE.

Open Bar Heather's leatherbound drinks list and you'll be greeted with the words "we love wines and these wines we love most" printed on its opening page. It's an alluring promise given the team behind the ebullient Byron Bay venture has been responsible for bringing some of the world's most celebrated natural wines into Australia.

James Audas and Tom Sheer have shuttled hooch into many of the country's coolest eateries under their Lo-Fi Wines banner. Similarly they are behind Byron's Luna Wine Store, so it's no surprise that the pair's first wine bar makes a priority of getting a drink in your hand. Only once you've chosen from the voluminous list, originally curated by sommelier Ollie Smith (now executed by Isabel Perez Fiz), packed with natural, organic and sustainably crafted drops drawn from a collection of more than 700 of the world's funkiest, cloudiest and otherwise untamed bottles, does talk turn to food.