It’s Friday, and I’ve been in Adelaide for the Distillers SA conference, getting to meet and know some of the smaller Australian distillers doing great work here. Jump on the Imperial Measures Distilling Rapture Amaro, by the way, and give the gin things a go from Little Juniper — they were just a couple of the standouts for me.
While I’ve been here, I got to stop into Honeydripper, the latest bar from Sean Howard and the guys behind Memphis Slim’s and Cry Baby — it’s a very different beast to those bars. Honeydripper is a luxe hifi lounge, it’s beautiful, and their upper level cocktail bar — which features a DJ deck setup between two flat lay cocktail stations — opens tonight.
Give their Dante cocktail a spin if you stop in; it’s a great example of When Drinks Collide, as you can read below.
Also below, a look at six vinyl bars from around Australia.
Last chance to enter — the Drink of the Year closes for entries at midnight tonight.
Boothby Staff
It might come as a curious trend to those who began their drinking years in the early 2000s; in those heady days of stick drinks — Lychee Caiprioska, anyone? — to visit a cocktail bar was to be in a space where drinks and DJs co-existed. There may have been some dancing, but if you had a bar you had a DJ — the two went hand in hand.
The music selectors went missing soon after the speakeasification of bars arrived. Spurred on by the cocktail renaissance — as bartenders reached into the profession’s long history to claim some respectability for their craft — the frivolity of a DJ was frowned upon.
But what is old is new again. Vinyl collections have begun to line the shelves of small indie bars around the world, and Australia and New Zealand are home to some fine examples — whether they’re known as listening bars, hifi bars, vinyl bars, or Japanese-inspired kissaten.
Of course, a bar doesn’t need to be known by any of those monikers to give attention to good music and a quality sound setup. Melbourne’s Caretaker’s Cottage sports a pair of high-end Superwax Mini speakers from bespoke Tasmanian makers Pitt & Giblin; recent Newtown addition, Bar Demo, boasts a custom-built speaker set up from Marrickville’s Translate Sound.
Honeydripper
11 Frome St, Adelaide
@honeydripper.hifi
Honeydripper is the much-anticipated next bar from the creative mind of Sean Howard (Memphis Slim’s, Cry Baby) to open in Adelaide’s CBD. The ground floor opened back in August, with the upstairs cocktail lounge opening tonight.
The upstairs lounge is where, between two industrious bartenders, the night’s DJ will preside over a custom gold plated Condesa mixer, which will take place in the centre of the bar, with three SL1210 turntables and two big Klipsch Heritage La Scala speakers built into the back bar.
Former Osteria Oggi manager Raf Thompson is on as co-owner and the day to day lead at Honeydripper, with the cocktails by Alex Bubba Johnston and Josh Mack, of the “clean, contemporary” variety, according to Sean.
Do try their Dante cocktail, a fluffy number inspired by the Garibaldi from Dante in New York but made entirely Honeydripper's own by colliding that drink with a Fizz (and using a feta oleo). Tasty stuff.
Waxflower
153 Weston St, Brunswick
waxflowerbar.com.au
@waxflowerbar
At Brunswick’s Waxflower, where shelves upon shelves are stocked with vinyl records, sleeve to sleeve. The bar is inspired by Japanese listening bars, or kissaten, but it’s not just about the music here. Wine is the focus of the drinks here, and they lean towards the natural approach, but if you’re after an aperitif-style cocktail — Martini, anyone? — you’ll be well looked after at Waxflower, with the bar led by French expat (and sometime DJ) Margot Michat.
Ruby, My Dear
12 Longland St, Newstead
rubyvinylbar.com
@rubyvinylbar
This 2023-vintage bar comes from Brisbane operators Bonnie Shearston, Tom Sanceau, Pablo Warner, and Andrew Hackworth. Ruby, My Dear — so named for a Thelonious Monk song — is a Newstead bar inspired by Japanese jazz cafes (or jazz kissaten) a spark which flows through the food and drink offering, too. A dark and moody interior is home to Japanese inspired snacks (there is nothing better than togarashi-spiked chicken skins as drinking food), a smart wine list, and approachable, delicious cocktails. It’s very good stuff.
Deadwax
182 Enmore Rd, Enmore
@deadwax.enmore
Deadwax opened on Enmore Rd in Sydney at the start of August, taking over the site of the old Enmore Country Club from owners with deep hospitality pedigree, Otis owners Conor O’Brien and Dan Teh, and chef Davyd Blacksmith (ex-NOLA Smokehouse). “The concept is a music bar,” says Teh. “With most other vinyl bars it’s usually funk, disco, house, whatever. While we like all those things, we want somewhere to listen to something outside of that. More fun. We’ve got 90s, 2000s bangers, more contemporary stuff.”
The difference, they say, is that they want their take on the Japanese listening bar style to be less serious, and more of a good time.
But there are quality cocktails, the likes of what you’d expect from O’Brien, and a snack-driven menu to keep listeners on the line a little longer; think chili butter edamame, wagyu pastrami sandos, and “classic 7-Eleven-style egg sando from Japan, but all ramped up, all done modern Australian,” according to Blacksmith.
Bar Selecta
Rear, 717 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn
barselecta.co
@barselecta.au
Billed as a neighbourhood Tokyo-style listening bar and inspired by co-owner and designer Michael Tan’s visits to Japan, Bar Selecta features luxe and lush mid-century interiors, with a big focus on creating an immersive music experience. They’ve paired that with a drinks program from two of Melbourne’s leading cocktail and whisky minds, co-owners Joey Tai and Kelvin Low (The Elysian Whisky Bar). There are three pillars to the drinks at Bar Selecta: cocktails, whisky, and sake, and to that end, they’re demystifying the sake category with fellow co-owner Masa Hisaike on hand; Masa has managed a number of sake bars and was most recently at Melbourne’s Case de Vinos.
Astral Weeks
12/66 Roe St, Northbridge
astral-weeks.com.au
@astral_weeks_bar
There are few bars like Astral Weeks in Perth, let alone WA. Here, the bartenders won’t be over-explaining the cocktails to guests who aren’t interested in explanations; everything here at Astral Weeks is about high fidelity sound, man. To that end, there are no shaken drinks here, so as not to detract from the quality sound emanating from the handbuilt speakers that sit astride the back bar.
Boothby Staff
