Drinking Melbourne is the weekly newsletter from drinks writer Fred Siggins, unpacking what’s happening in Melbourne’s bars (and what you can learn from them), sent every Tuesday to your inbox. Get on the list here.
Wandering through the small side streets of Melbourne’s inner west, it’s mostly non-descript, low warehouses and workshops that speak to this area’s industrial roots. And while plenty of young families have found affordable housing here in Kensington in recent years, the hospitality scene has never quite popped off in the same way as trendier areas like Footscray and Thornbury. As such, Nubilum Distillery isn’t just a fascinating addition to Australia’s craft spirits landscape, it’s also filling a much-needed gap in this neighbourhood’s hospo offering.
Nubilum produces rakia (sometimes spelled rakija, rakiya, rachiu or rikea), the collective term for the traditional fruit brandies of the Balkans. Most commonly distilled from plums, grapes and pears, other fruits such as apricots and berries may also be used. Rakias are sometimes barrel aged or infused with herbs and other flavours post distillation, too, but are most commonly drunk straight from the still as unaged eau de vie. Any Aussie who grew up with Balkan uncles can tell you stories of being fed this fiery spirit during drinking sessions in the back-shed, where tiny stills used to make rakia from backyard-grown fruits are often housed.
Nubilium distillery provides a good dose of this back shed nostalgia to anyone who wanders past, open to the public four evenings a week as a full-service cocktail bar. This brick warehouse has a comfortable, DIY vibe, with mismatched couches and Melbourne share-house style esoterica jumbled along the walls, all lit up by the early autumn sun streaming through the corrugated fibreglass of the high, industrial ceiling.
I chatted to a couple of regulars who seemed very at home in this odd little space. “It makes me think of what might happen if your grandmother decorated your grandfather’s shed,” they tell me. “It’s just a very unpretentious, welcoming place for us to spend time outside the house. We live close by, and this provides a really important third space for us.”
I asked if they’d ever tried rakia before coming here, to which both said no. “But [distiller] Will is very open about how they make things here, so that’s been really interesting. We were surprised at how easy it is to drink rakia. It makes cocktails really full-bodied but without overpowering the other ingredients. At this point, given that they’re using local fruits as the base ingredient, it doesn’t feel esoteric to us at all, it just seems practical.”
Those cocktails include things like the bracingly fresh Plum & Proper, made with Nubilum plum rakia, clarified lime juice and bitters. It’s super well-balanced, with a lovely Christmas cake aroma giving way to freshness and bright fruit, with the base spirit doing the heavy lifting. On its own, the rakia is a bright and powerful eau de vie, with just enough heat to let you know you’re drinking like a Baklan and not that soft and refined stuff the French make.
Across the room, a couple of parents, bub asleep in the pram, are enjoying Pear Rakia Margaritas, the bar’s most popular drink. It’s impressive to see how the team at Nubilum have found ways to introduce these spirits to people by meeting them where they’re at (who doesn’t want a pear Margie?), while also providing some pretty left-field drinking experiences for those willing to dive in, like their grape rakia Gibson (also a favourite), which they call a Grappa Martini. The bartenders gleefully prepare one for me with extra onion brine. It’s delicious - powerful and textural but still light enough to do the essential Martini thing.
Nubilum’s distiller Will Wheatley spent time as a teenager in the North-Western suburb of St Albans, where, he says, “everybody was making some version of their culture’s back yard spirit, so the first spirits I ever drank were grappa and rakia.” Over the years, Will maintained distilling clear spirits from fruit as a hobby, but when the Covid lockdowns hit forcing him to spend so much time at home, he decided to build a commercial distillery with co-founder Katherine Barrett.
“We chose rakia because one of the people who taught me how to distill was Serbian,” Will says, “but this is a Europe-wide product. Every culture makes clear spirits from fruit, like grappa in Italy, eau de vie in France, slivovitz, tsipouro, everyone does it, and we really wanted to focus on clear spirits made from fruit rather than grain,” he says. A lot of that ethos comes from what people in Melbourne grow in their back yards, just like Will’s mentors back in St Albans.
“All our lemons come from the trees here in Kensington," Will tells me. “We’re currently working on an apricot product where all the fruit comes from people’s back yards, and we’re about to do some quinces, too. If anyone brings us enough fruit, we’ll make it into a spirit and give you a few bottles. These spirits have a half-millennia history of fruit growers sharing what they’ve made from their own harvest, and that’s something we want to maintain." he says.
Despite Australia’s thousands of craft spirits producers, the distillery bar model has yet to hit its cultural and economic stride in the same way brewery bars and winery cellar doors have. The reasons for this are myriad. Among them; beer and wine are volume products where spirits tend to be more expensive and less sessionable. Way more people go out for a few wines or a few beers than a few gins. Skills are also important. Good cocktail bartenders and folks with strong spirits knowledge are a lot harder to come by than staff with enough experience to pull a few pints at a brew pub.
The biggest reason is probably cultural, with wine and beer (and the places we consume them), far better established in the Australian collective drinking consciousness than spirits. This is especially true for local distilleries, which still only produce a fraction of the spirits we consume, while the lion’s share of beer and wine sold in Australia is locally made. But of course there are some great examples of spirits producers creating quality hospitality offerings, especially bigger brands with solid financial backing (Archie Rose, Starward, Never Never and Four Pillars spring to mind).
But Nubilum is providing a template for a smaller-scale, more neighborhood-focused model, proving that even esoteric spirits like rakia can have an influence well beyond its assumed cultural borders in the Balkan-Australian community. By providing great hospitality, great cocktails, and an all-important third space for Kensington locals, Nubilum is bearing fruit for Melbourne.
Around the Bars
Here for the Lolz. Melbourne International Comedy Festival is upon us, and there are so many great bars in Melbourne hosting comedy performances, often with great drinks specials, so definitely get out there on your nights off and support if you can, and if you’re behind the stick - good luck!
Fire up for Firenze. As part of the launch of Suntory Cup, Locale Firenze (Florence, Italy), ranked #22 on The World’s 50 Best Bars 2025, will be popping up at LB’s Record Bar on Monday, April 13th. Bartenders Alessandro Mengoni and Nicola Peverieri will also host a masterclass for trade during the afternoon exploring this year’s Suntory Cup theme of Celebration. Attendance can be confirmed via Club Suntory at club.suntory.com, or get in touch with brand ambassador Kevin Griffin to find out more.
