“The Blue Mountains has been dying for a wine bar,” Frankie & Mo’s co-owner Tom Colman tells Broadsheet. “I think people are over going to the pub.”

He and his dad, Bob Colman, were looking for a venue to showcase their own successful natural wine label. Bob founded Frankly, This Wine Was Made by Bob in 2016, with Tom, a trained viticulturalist, on board since the end of 2019.

The space they found is inconspicuous from the street: a narrow, freestanding, homely spot that was formerly an art gallery, on Blackheath’s Govetts Leap Road. There are four rooms: an 11-seat bistro, a dining room with large kitchen table, an open-kitchen-slash-bar, and a bottle shop behind a glass door down the back. Every drop on the shelves is available to drink, some by the bottle, some by the glass. “The first person who comes in might order a light red, so that’s what we’ll open,” Colman says. “Or we might open a rosé, and when that’s gone we do the same, or an orange wine. The people who come in dictate what we open.”

In the kitchen, chef Em Evans (ex-Golden Gully, The Sunshine Inn) brings a menu that’s strictly organic and heavy on the veg. Dishes will only be available for three weeks before there’s something new, but you might find a mushroom tart topped with a crisp wafer of parmesan, a comforting bowl of potato gnocchi with sundried tomato pesto, or venison shoulder with chestnuts and fennel puree. If you want to keep it snacky, there’s also focaccia, olives and burrata.

For dessert the chocolate silk pie with saffron-poached pears is well matched to one of Tom’s current favourite wines, a touriga nacional by Victoria’s Eleven Sons Wine. “It’s got almost confectionary, bubblegum grape characteristics that go really nicely with the pear and chocolate.”

Tom is usually behind the bar, chatting with customers, sometimes offering his own walnut-and-plum liqueur as a digestif. While the venue’s vibe is relaxed, the criteria for what’s in the bottle shop is strict. “The grapes [must] be organic, biodynamic, hand-harvested – the wine can’t have additives. We need natural fermentation, no filtration and lower than 30 parts per million sulfur as a preservative. We also try to keep the offering over 50 per cent Australian,” Tom explains.

Tom and Bob practice what they preach. Their Kanimbla Valley vineyard is farmed organically and regeneratively, and the wines are made naturally, without preservatives. “Blackheath is reasonably conservative, so natural wines are very different for some people; it can be a slow learning process,” Tom says. “But it’s nice to convert people and show them something new.”

Frankie and Mo’s
44 Govetts Leap Road, Blackheath
0493 555 791

Hours
Thu & Fri midday–10pm
Sat & Sun 10am–10pm

@frankieandmos
@franklythiswinewasmademybob