Since it opened in 2022, Hot-Listed Caretaker’s Cottage has become one of the city’s busiest bars. The team consistently makes 300 to 450 cocktails a day, and last year landed at number 21 on the World’s 50 Best Bars list (the highest ranking of any bar in the country).

“We’ve always been fans of having a precinct within one group,” says Rob Libecans, who co-owns the bar with Matt Stirling and Ryan Noreiks. Next month, the trio will open Three Horses, a new 45-seat cocktail bar about a minute’s walk from Caretaker’s, in the former Troika Bar space at 106 Little Lonsdale Street .

“While we want [Caretaker’s] to be an institution, we also have really strong creative urges that we just can’t facilitate at Caretaker’s,” Libecans says. “The idea is that we don’t change this place, and it just maintains a really high standard. But for our sanity, we need to do something different, and equally cool in its own right.”

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Cocktails at Three Horses will be “simple, bold and clean,” using three or four ingredients. “What's in the market is going to dictate a lot of what we’re going to do,” Libecans says. There’ll be a “thread of sherry in everything”, inspired largely by a night the three founders had at La Venencia, a 103-year-old Madrid bar focused on the fortified wine. Pedro Ximenez and the like will be used in a number of ways: “as a bit of seasoning”, to keep drinks low-ABV and to add sweetness without using sugar.

The famous Caretaker’s Martini will cross the road, but there won’t be Guinness, which Libecans estimates Caretaker’s sold 43,000 pints of last year. Instead, the team has worked with Hop Nation on a European-style pilsner that’s “clean, but with a little bit of salt touch to it.”

When Caretaker’s first opened, Melbourne was just emerging from lockdowns – and the trio had no idea how popular it would become. Now, with more experience, stronger relationships and capital behind them, they’re stepping into this second venture with more confidence and clarity. “I think I’m more excited about Three Horses than I was when we were setting up Caretaker’s,” Libecans says.

Three Horses is expected to open at 106 Little Lonsdale Street this August.