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The adventurous Collingwood outpost of a wine bar and bottle shop chain, The Moon is finely attuned to its neighbourhood, serving standout wine in an artful, atmospheric setting.
Some punters might come here just to shop, and fair call, too. Around 300 wines are on the shelves at any one time and the list is constantly changing, the only hard-and-fast rules being that they’re made by small producers with minimal intervention from the winemaker (the “natural wine” end of the spectrum) and they’re good expressions of where they’re from, whether that’s Tuscany or Heathcote.
But, really, just shopping for wine at The Moon is like going to the cinema just for the popcorn. Perhaps it’s the dark and edgy setting, but something about the place brings a sense of adventure. Whether you know all or nothing about natural wine, this is a bar that coaxes you out of your comfort zone, willing you to try something new and then see how it pairs with cheese, say, or charcuterie, an oyster or an excellent chicken sandwich. Who knows if you’ll like that sparkling gamay from France? Perhaps you’d prefer the sparkling rosé from Italy. Either way, the decision-making process is fun and you can buy a bottle of your new favourite to take with you when you leave.
Though the darkness of The Moon can be intimidating at first, it’s actually one of its most appealing features. Once you’ve found your spot – at the long wooden communal table down the back, on a stool at the bar or at one of the small tables along one wall – the darkness brings a sense of hunkering down that’s comforting. There’s also something great about choosing your wine from a shelf rather than a list. All the bottles on those spot-lit shelves and in the glass-doored fridges are available to drink in (take off $25 to take away) and the massed labels make for great background art. The comprehensive by-the-glass list changes constantly and the wine-friendly food adds to the experience.
The tight list of snacks might include pipis with young garlic and potatoes or flavour-packed combinations such as smoked eel, onion and broad-bean leaves, but there’s simpler stuff, too – quality bread and butter, for instance, or a rotating list of cheese that embraces both local and international makers.
And while wine is The Moon’s main event, you’ll find other interesting things to drink. The concise list of beer includes a couple on tap and cans from breweries from such as Stomping Ground, Burnley Brewing and Hop Nation, there’s a similarly compact cocktail list, and some interesting low- or no-alcohol options, such as a sparkling blood orange-flavoured kombucha and an XPA from alcohol-free beer company Heaps Normal.
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