Your local: Natural Science Wine and Liquor

In Melbourne's leafy eastern suburb of Blackburn is a bottle shop unlike most. Natural Science Wine and Liquor is a modern bottle-o championing Australian made and family owned wine, craft beer, liquor and non-alcoholic drinks.

"I think the only thing that's not Australian made are a few glasses from Denver & Liely, a couple of Melbourne guys who do some pretty exceptional whisky and gin glasses," says owner Tristan Jallais.

Australian made and family owned is the ethos at Natural Science. There’s no import brands, no corporates, just a focus on emerging and established independent Australian producers – names like Fleet, Sentio, Ochota Barrels, Ravensworth and Latta Vino to name a few.

Natural Science Wine and Liquor will celebrate its two-year anniversary in January.

"There's some producers that might only be three or four vintages old, and then there's producers that have been doing it for 25 to 30 years. We're not trying to just buy the coolest or the newest stuff, we just want to have a range of really great wine."

Husband-and-wife duo Tristan and Joyce are the faces behind Natural Science Wine and Liquor. The two opened the store in January of 2022. "We wanted to open a modern bottle shop in an area that's kind of starved of them, so we always had our eye on being in the suburbs. The initial genesis of the idea wasn't Australian only, but it kind of evolved into that concept over time, and then especially over Covid when we really started to think about who we wanted to support."

Before opening Natural Science, Tristan was the manager and buyer of Coburg's Post Office Hotel for close to 10 years, and prior to that he spent a few years at former fine-dining restaurant MoMo (not to mention his former life as a pool tiler). Joyce impressively juggles the store, working as a palliative care nurse, and studying her master of nursing (and also has a background as a chemical engineer).

Natural Science is owned and operated by husband-and-wife team, Tristan Jallais and Joyce Chua.

When it comes to the name of the shop, Tristan says people have assumed that it's a statement on natural wine. "It's really not...we just wanted to be able to have the freedom to stock things that we really like and that we really get behind. I mean, as a side effect, we are dealing with a lot of smaller, independent producers. Producers who are really conscious about how their wine is made and how their fruit is grown. So it's a happy side effect when you choose to be selective about what you stock."

The name Natural Science was actually inspired by an album from Canadian prog rock band, Rush. "There's this old album from the 70s and the last song on it is called 'Natural Science', and I always just thought that was such a great name for something. And then when we were discussing the idea for the wine store, I brought up the name. I was thinking about how it would work, Natural Science Wines or Natural Science X, Y, Z. But Joyce, with her engineering background, she thought it was the perfect name for a bottle shop. I completely overlooked this, but everything we sell is simple, natural science. Wine is natural science, brewing is natural science, distillation is natural science – so actually when you scratch beneath the surface, it's super, super literal."

Natural Science is open Wednesday to Sunday. You can visit the store at 9A Salisbury Avenue, Blackburn in Victoria or online at naturalscience.shop.

Image credit: Michael Pham.