Half Moon Wine Store, South Brisbane’s Enormously Popular Vino Den, Expands Into Brisbane’s North

Specialty wine stores. Suddenly they’re a thing in Brisbane.

Since the end of last year, long-term operators such as Craft Wine Store and Wine Experience have been joined by Half Moon Wine Store in South Brisbane and Wineism in Albion. In the Valley, the team behind The Zoo will soon open Booze, just across Ann Street from Uh-Oh Italian Wine Store in Bakery Lane, which opened at the end of 2020.

It’s been such a speedy change that Half Moon’s Jordan Shertock and Alex Farquhar had to think a little strategically when choosing to expand across the river to Brisbane’s north side.

“Wilston felt like the only virgin territory we could go [to] in the north without treading on anyone’s feet, like Craft or Wineism,” Shertock says. “It was a bit of a dead zone in terms of that offering. You have Black Sheep Bottle Shop in Newmarket, which would be the closest, but there’s nothing quite like what we’re doing.”

Shertock and Farquhar last week opened a new Half Moon Wine Store in a cute weatherboard-fronted tenancy on Wilston’s Kedron Brook Road high street. It follows on from the South Brisbane original and an online shop, which have both been a roaring success since opening in December last year.

“South Brisbane was a really good litmus test to see whether what we’re offering is what people in Brisbane are ready for,” Shertock says.

Half Moon Wilston is a slightly different beast to the South Brisbane shop. The fit-out feels more like what you think of when someone says, “classy bottle shop”, with polished concrete floors, timber-lined shelves and plenty of natural light, rather than the original’s garage-like set-up. It perhaps fits better with Wilston’s older demographic, which Shertock says is slanted more towards traditional wine-drinking. The cellar list of hard-to-find wine, beer and spirits, though, hasn’t changed.

“We’re not changing the offering for Wilston until we have a reason to,” Shertock says. “Because that would be defeating the purpose of what we do.

“People in Wilston … it might be more about traditional wine knowledge rather than Australian lo-fi wines, but they’re just people who are genuinely interested in wine, and education is a big part of it for us. We try to impart as much knowledge as possible without being wankers about it.”

On the Wilston shelves you might find a grower champagne from Diebolt-Vallois, or a Jerome Lambert Le Fil Rouge gamay from the Loire Valley; Italian drops such as a skinsy 2020 Alessandro Viola Simphona bianco, a 2018 barbaresco from Olek Bondonio, or a 2021 magnum of Foradori Lezer teroldego; and funky Australian wines that include a La Violetta Spunk pét nat, a 2022 Fleet skin-contact pinot gris, and a 2019 Byrne Farm cool-climate chardonnay. Shertock estimates that Half Moon’s cellar now ranges up to around 500 bottles, with the split these days 60-40, international to Australian.

“I definitely have favourite Australian producers, but the representation for some of those European wines up here is almost non-existent, so those wines are our biggest point of difference, in a way,” Shertock says.

Away from wine, it’s beer from Collective Arts, Two Metre Tall, Sobremesa and Heaps Normal; boutique spirits such as Animus Ambrosian gin, Hellfire Bluff potato vodka and Bozal mezcal; and a growing collection of aperitivi and digestivi that includes Beechworth Bitters amaro, Meigamma vermut rosso, and Maidenii vermouth from Victoria.

“There is this growing focus on amaro and vermouth [in Brisbane],” Shertock says. “You get people coming in, and you get them onto the vermouth and they’ll be telling you how amazing it is. And it works because it’s made for that kind of drinking – it has the climate for that afternoon, aperitif sipping.”

Half Moon Wine Store Wilston
77a Kedron Brook Road, Wilston
0493 219 063

Hours:
Sun to Tue 11am–7pm
Wed & Thu 11am–8pm
Fri & Sat 10am–8pm

halfmoonwinestore.com.au