Flemington bottle shop supports local producers

Pin Oak Beer & Wine is not your average bottle-o. Proprietor Leanne House has created a cozy establishment that only sells drinks from small-scale independent producers.

If you want a beer made by the two big foreign breweries that control 85 per cent of the beer market in Australia, you can go to any of the other five bottle shops in the neighbourhood.

“If any of the producers I stock gets bought out by one of the big companies, I’ll stop stocking them,” Ms House told North West City News.

She says it can be a little harder to determine who owns which wineries, but she still endeavours to promote independent wineries. Ms House is always on the lookout for new and interesting producers.

The wine bar maintains an evolving list of wines and beers on tap that patrons can drink in the courtyard out the back, or one of the cozy nooks inside. It is pet friendly and patrons are welcome to bring their own food.

The shopfront on Pin Oak Crescent sits directly opposite Newmarket Station. A location Ms House describes as, “a beautiful, vibrant street with a great little community.”

She opened Pin Oak Beer and Wine after a long career in hospitality and previously worked gastropubs like The Grand Hotel in Richmond and the Courthouse Hotel in North Melbourne.

“I wanted to open a place that I would want to go to,” Ms House said.

Her ambition was to create a comfortable alternative to going to the pub. She said that it was meant to be the kind of place a woman in her 40s could feel comfortable coming alone to read a book.

Opening in 2018, Ms House quickly built a community of loyal patrons. She credits this strong sense of community with helping the business to survive COVID.

She thinks it is important to pay that support forward to other small businesses in the community, adding that Kensington was blessed to have two great distilleries, Nubilum Distilling and Bakery Hill Distillery, as well as an independent brewery, Bonehead Brewing.

To celebrate Pin Oak’s fifth anniversary, Ms House collaborated with CoConspirators Brewery in Brunswick to produce the Hostess Pale Ale, and she hopes for more collaborations with other local producers in the future.

For Ms House, it’s important to support other local businesses. “I just don’t want to see that money going overseas.”