Popular wine merchant and vigneron Neil Prentice has teamed up with restaurateur and former owner of Rochford, Bruce Dowding, to set up one of the more imaginative and individual wine bars in Melbourne. The idea was, Prentice informs me, ‘to set up a wine bar where Bruce and I could sell lots of pinot and lots of riesling, then we went hunting for some food to match it. We like the theatre of sushi, so we have Japanese cuisine out the front, plus a range of Thai and Vietnamese style of food. Then we bought our pinots and rieslings (which change constantly on the list), plus some other things, but no young cabernet sauvignon whose tannins are an anathema to the sort of food we’re doing. We want the sort of wine when people can reach for their third glass before they’ve realised they’ve drunk their second.’ Birdcage’s list begins with house wines made by Neil and Bruce for $2.50 a glass ‘which people can order like a beer or gin and tonic’, or a more eclectic set of interesting wines by glass and bottle.
