Three Horses is the new bar coming from the Caretaker’s Cottage crew

There’s a new bar on the way from the award-winning team behind Melbourne bar, Caretaker’s Cottage. Owners Matt Stirling, Ryan Noreiks, and Rob Libecans are set to open a new sherry and cocktail-focused bar, Three Horses, before the end of September this year, and we’ve spoken to Libecans below for the details.

When Melbourne bar Caretaker’s Cottage opened, it quickly became one of Australia’s favourite bars — and a favourite of bartenders from around the country and abroad. But for those of you just joining us now, here’s a recap of where Caretaker’s Cottage has come from:

• Before Caretaker’s Cottage, they were Fancy Free, a bar consultancy and popup that appeared around Australia and the world in 2018;
• Fancy Free then became a popup on Little Collins Street in Melbourne for a few months in 2019;
• The owners Matt Stirling, Ryan Noreiks, and Rob Libecans opened Caretaker’s Cottage in February 2022;
• Accolades soon followed: the bar landed at number one on the Boothby Best Bars Victoria list in 2023 and 2024;
• Caretaker’s Cottage debuted at number 23 on The World’s 50 Best Bars list in 2023, and rose to number 21 in 2024, picking up the Michter’s Art of Hospitality award along the way.

Their next bar — located just a stone’s throw away from Caretaker’s, will be called Three Horses, and they have taken over the space which used to be Troika at 106 Little Lonsdale Street. So what have they got in store? Below, lightly edited and condensed for clarity, we speak to Rob Libecans about what we can expect when the new bar opens.

What’s the big idea behind the new bar?

What’s the big idea? We love where we are. We love our little corner of the city and the world. So why go anywhere else? So we’ve managed to find a spot 15 metres behind Caretakers. It was an old textile mill. So it feels like you’re in like the smallest warehouse you’ve ever been in. It’s quite industrial in there at the moment, it’s going to get all softened out. We’re calling it Three Horses.

[The space ] was originally called Troika.

What are you going to be serving here? Are you going to be serving Guinness? What are you doing?

No more Guinness, that’s a Caretakers thing. We’re really conscious of how close it is to Caretaker’s, and that it can’t feel like a waiting room. It’s very much its own different thing. I would say it’s not a sherry bar, but there’s a thread of sherry through everything. Whether we tell people or not, [sherry is] something that the three of us have always loved. I think the cocktails that have sherry [in them] always do the best at Caretaker’s.

[It will be a] bigger menu, more cocktail-focused. We’re going to be rolling with about 16 drinks on the menu. We’re going to do just our own beers in there as well. And then a lot of uncool Mediterranean, grape varieties, but by small Aussie producers.

When you say your own beers, so you’re gonna get them made for you?

Yeah, that’s it. So Brett Noreiks has been working behind the scenes to have our own essentially European lager. It’s got a little bit of a fino [sherry] touch to it as well.

You’re not going to change the menu every month like at Caretaker’s, are you?

Why would I have two albatrosses around my neck? No, we’re gonna try and [change the menu] four times a year, but keep the structure the same. You know, we’re gonna have always a couple of Sgroppinos on the menu. We’ll always have three Highballs on the menu. We’ll have a couple of interesting Sours. We’ll have some seasonal sherries that we’re making in-house. A bigger offering — less change, the opposite to Caretaker’s.

So you mentioned seasonal sherrys that you’ll have in house? Are you’re going to have your own sherry?

For the last eight years, we’ve always made a mandarin sherry every season. So we’re like, OK, how far can we take this? There’s a coconut fat wash, for that real salty, kind of rich, but still dry aspect. You’ve got fig and prune amontillado in there, and then a stout caramel with tokay.

The idea is that everything has no more than three flavours or three ingredients in it — simple, bold, everything done and juiced fresh. It’s a bit like halfway between [Hong Kong’s] Bar Leone and Bulletin Place.

And is this place inspired by anywhere that you’ve been on your travels?

Yeah, we lived at La Venencia in Madrid while we there last October, and it’s hard not to fall in love with it. You know, no music, terrible service, pretty average sherry in a room that looks like it’s tobacco stained over 200 years. And I was just like, oh, this is great. This is it. That was a big inspiration for us.

But it’s also just understanding what we do differently at Caretaker’s and saying, okay, well, how can we make this better? How can we make it a bit different? How can we give it its own platform? So I think Bulletin Place and definitely La Venencia are the two biggest icons for this bar.

So in terms of like how big is the place, how many punters will you have?

In classic Caretaker’s style, it’s 45 seats, so we’ll get 60-odd in there [with standing]. But it’s one room rather than five cupboards and a set of stairs [like Caretaker’s]. It’s all laid out, a big long bar, two huge stations. We could probably fit 15 people at the bar. We’ve got room for large groups, it’s all standing or high seats, a bit more like a pub.

And are you going to call this the cocktail bar as opposed to the pub, which is how you refer to Caretaker’s?

It’s a bar that we sell cocktails in.

Ha, love it. When are you planning to open?

Well, the accountant says it’s before September, so it’s before September. That’s with [some time set aside for] a couple of things going wrong, which they always do. We’re hoping to be open before September.

And how do you go about finding staff for Three Horses? You need a bunch of staff at Caretaker’s, and I imagine this place will be pretty busy once you get it open too.

Yeah, I think so. So we’re going to cross-pollinate. There’s a couple of people that are going to come over from Caretaker’s just to lead the way. They know and embody our culture and our service standards. But it’s also time for them to just have a bit of clear air, put their stamp on somewhere.

Is there going to be a hero drink that you really want to push? You know, you’ve got the Guinness and the Martini at Caretaker’s.

So the one thing that’s coming over is the house Martini at Three Horses. But we have the option to add fino sherry in there (or apera sherry) to make it a Jabberwocky. We’re doing a little bit of theatre around it. So yeah, the Martini is going to be the big thing still.

At the Caretaker’s Cottage takeover for the Boothby Best Bars QLD awards in Brisbane you guys did a Jabberwocky, and it was delicious.

Yeah, how do you make a Martini better? Sherry’s gonna do it.

And how are you and the other owners feeling about opening a new place?

We’re really excited. For Matt [Stirling], he gets to essentially hire a new personality for our new venue. He gets to train there. Ryan [Noreiks] is just knocking it out of the park — the whole idea with the design stuff is that it’s bold, but there’s some real subtlety. It’s telling stories through panels and colours. So he’s just been let off the leash. So he’s been down a rabbit hole of sending me Japanese comics from the 1970s. He is killing it. I think we’re all excited because we’ve got a bit of money, I think we know who we are. We’ve got more space so we can do the things that we couldn’t do [at Caretaker’s Cottage]. We can have crushed ice.

What a luxury!

Yeah, honestly, we’re just like, my god, we can have more than four glasses.

What’s the decor going to be like inside? What’s the atmosphere you’re going for?

Thandi Sterling, Matt’s sister is coming on board as our architect. I would say go and check out La Venencia. We’ve done an Aussie version of it — there’s a lot of greens, a lot of oak, a lot of nickel in there as well, just to cool things down.

Why the name Three Horses? I know the troika refrence, but why the horses?

I don’t know, it’s not something that you would normally call a bar, but it feels very pubby. Which we love. It all kind of works. And then the way we’re doing the panels [inside the bar] and the way we’ve got probably five logos as well — which will probably become 10 knowing Ryan — it just feels right. I think this is where we have learned to run a bit.

I don’t know if you know this, I have a real strong phobia of horses. So even my wife was like, you know, this is progress for me.

You’ll be open five nights to start with?

We’re gonna start with four and then we’re gonna jump to six pretty quickly. But we’re gonna make sure we’re all straight for probably the first month and a half.

Where can people follow the journey to open?

Jump on Instagram at @threehorsesbar.