The bar that defined Australian natural wine, still pouring the deepest Victorian small-producer list in the country.
wine · Iconic Bar Liberty has been the Fitzroy reference point for serious Australian natural wine since Banjo Harris Plane, Casey Wall, Michael Bascetta and Andre Bishop opened the room on Johnston Street in 2016, and the cellar has only deepened in the intervening decade. The list runs to over three hundred references with a deliberate bias toward small Mornington, Heathcote, Macedon and Pyrenees producers — Latta, Bobar, Sentio, Patrick Sullivan — alongside a Loire and Jura section that earned its place through honest comparison rather than imported prestige.
The by-the-glass programme rotates weekly through twenty references, the food is short and modern, and the floor team know every producer personally. Ranks first because no other room in the country combines this depth of Victorian buying with the natural-wine evangelism that defined the past decade.
For the full ranking, see our editorial round-up of the 10 best wine bars in Melbourne, the broader Melbourne wine bars guide, and our category index of wine bars worldwide.