Five Leaves Left – An amazing venue

Five Leaves Left – worth a visit!

Five Leaves Left is a relatively new venue in the central part of the CBD which is both a bottle shop, bar and bookshop, owned by Clinton Elvin.

He always has some interesting wines available for sipping and all the bottles are available to purchase and take home. We should add here that he also sells some of the natural wines that we import from France as well as wines from some of our friends who also do the same.

As an example, during the last visit we made to this venue we saw that he had on the shelves a bottle of “A toi nous” which is a wine made by the incredibly clever former Czech paratrooper who now lives in Beaujolais in France making amazing wines without additives and without sulphites. His name is Andréa Calek. If you ever see one of his wines on a list try it because they are great examples of the natural genre.

We also saw another interesting wine at Five Leaves Left by a winemaker we don’t import but whose wines we like very much. Anders Steen, along with Anne Blauert, has a vineyard in the Ardeche, in France near the village of Valvigneres which has an excellent restaurant that we visit occasionally. We first came across him at a restaurant in Copenhagen called Relae where he was the sommelier.

The wine at Five Leaves Left was named “In the end all that is left is what we give” which is a typical name for the wines of Anders and Anne! This wine was made from separately direct-pressed Syrah and Viogner. The juice from both pressings were combined a day or two after the pressing to create a rosé-style wine.

Forgive us for getting a bit excited about this venue but they do have wines we love and books that cover many topics that we seek out! We have also just scanned their Instagram site again and we saw a wine from the Jura that we love. We spend a lot of time in this area of France because there are so many emerging winemakers here who take great pride in the local oxidative approach to winemaking, especially the famous Vin Jaune that we have been importing to Australia for a long time.

The Jura wine that caught our attention is not from a long-time winemaker from this region but from a relatively new winemaker, Katie Worobeck, and the wine is called De L’Avant which is a Chardonnay wine made by with grapes from forty year old vines planted on the limestone soils near the town of Grusse, which is in the southern extremity of the Jura. It is well worth a try!

And the books are as interesting as the wines. Take, for example, one of the books we saw recently, namely “The Eyes are the Best Part” by Monica Kim. This is a book written by a Korean American in Los Angeles whose mother moved from Korea to the United States some 40 years ago. The “best part” are the eyes of a fish being eaten!

We also noticed “At the Chime of a City Clock” by prolific British author DJ Taylor who we first came across through his books about Orwell, particularly his autobiography of the famous author.

Be aware that this is a “stand-up” and relatively small location, however it is well-worth a visit for the quirky nature of both the wines and the reading material highlighted here.

You can find more information as well as photos of wine bottles and books from the venue on their Instagram site which is here.

We have also included this venue in our review of bars to visit due to the exciting wines and the also exciting book selections at this location. Our story about these bars can be found here.

The opening hours of this location are provided below.