A world away from wine country, this new urban winery is worth seeking out

Your map hasn’t done you dirty. After leaving the whir of Moorabbin’s South Road for the whimper of Alex Avenue – where the only action on a Sunday arvo is L-platers on tentative practice laps – you might be questioning. But among the auto shops closed for the weekend is one open door that has your name on it.

Behind an inconspicuous red-brick facade in this industrial pocket of the south-east is The Story Wines, an established urban winery with a tasting room that’s less than six months old.

While this isn’t an area devoid of hospitality activity (the Morris Moor precinct, home to Stomping Ground brewery, is minutes away), this spot still feels like a diamond in the rough, caught in an anonymous backstreet web like the nearby Mum’s Lunch, a Good Food Guide critics’ pick serving home-style Korean dishes.

The suburb’s hidden gems attracted winemaker Rory Lane, and now he’s become one, converting the front of his production HQ into a place he can pour his wines for the public, from smashable pet nat to heavy-hitting syrahs, plus his own gin distilled with native botanicals.

Outside are a couple of picnic tables, where locals drop in for a glass or two and an antipasto platter. But if you’re making a dedicated trip to Moorabbin, a guided tasting is the go.

Inside, the vibe is a mash-up of industrial and mid-century modern across two interconnecting spaces with just 20 seats combined. Whitewashed brick walls have blackbutt hardwood wainscoting that flows into a banquette – the best seat in the house – which looks directly into the winery through a colossal cut-out in the wall.

This is where Lane – who studied arts, majoring in literature, before leaping into the wine world – tells the many stories of The Story Wines. How he founded it in 2004, coming from a potato-farming, not winemaking, family. How he mostly sources grapes from the Grampians, including varieties atypical for the region, that he planted himself. And how his “hands-off” approach results in small-batch wines with a strong sense of place.

Tastings are tiered from the introductory ($25) to the single vineyard ($45), which I opt for, to the vintner’s experience ($65). Across five pours, you’ll learn that Lane is a serious winemaker who doesn’t take himself too seriously. To the soundtrack of Gang Starr’s rhythmic rap, wearing an “I <3 Killarney” T-shirt (for the Victorian town his father lived in, and his Irish heritage), he walks us through his catalogue with an easygoing-ness that engages even my partner, who’s not drinking nor particularly interested in wine.

It’s just us here today, as Lane paints a picture of a “giant ceramic egg you could fit inside”, which was part of the “experimental” fermentation for his 2021 marsanne rousanne viognier, a skin-contact blend with gingery undertones and a curious bitterness.

More tales are told as we’re whisked into the winery mid-tasting, where the setting sun casts beams through the back windows. “It’s sort of like a church,” Lane jokes.

He’s in the thick of harvest, so grapes are fermenting all around us, perfuming the air as we weave among the tanks and barrels, some chalked up with drawings by his daughters.

He pulls back the cover on what looks like a spa of syrah, where wine speak is at work. “Carbonic maceration” is much more than just jargon when you can see the whole bunches kept intact – not crushed – so fermentation can happen within the grapes themselves. The effect is “a certain bubblegum, strawberries and cream-like flavour”, says Lane. Booking the top-of-the-range tasting lets you try wines straight from the barrel. It’s not unusual to get up close and personal with the winemaking process on a tasting-turned-tour like this, but you’ll usually have driven at least an hour out of the city and be surrounded by rolling vineyards.

Of course, urban wineries like Jamsheed and Noisy Ritual exist. But rarely is the experience this intimate, on this small of a scale, offered this readily (four days a week), in such an industri-cool space, with stories this well-told.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.