The MONA museum next door may have stolen most of the world’s attention when it opened at the start of 2011, but for those who enjoy fine wines and expertly crafted beers, the opening of a wine bar just up the hill at Moorilla Estate is just as exciting. With a dozen taps, excellent wine selection and in house charcuterie and provedore, it is doing for the Estate’s beer offering what The Source fine dining restaurant has done for food.

Kitted out as stylishly as you’d expect for a bar created as part of a new $20m winery, its beers are poured from slim, elegant metal towers amid marble bar tops and polished concrete floors, while visitors can sup away enjoying views over the river Derwent or peering into the Moorilla wine barrel room. Five of the taps are permanently given over to Moo Brew’s range. The other seven are constantly on rotation, mixing up the best in homegrown Aussie craft beer with excellent imports, including the likes of Chimay and Budvar. The draught beers are embellished by a carefully curated list of bottles – usually around 60 – drawn up by Kris Miles, who helped get Brisbane’s Nectar bottleshop off the ground and worked at Beer DeLuxe in Melbourne before heading to Hobart.

With Moo Brew having opened an impressive new 35 hectolitre brewery a few kilometres from the Estate, the original brewery is being lined up to produce a range of seriously exclusive limited release beers that are likely to be released under the MONA label and only available at the museum and in the Wine Bar. What’s more, in keeping with the wild extravagance of the neighbouring museum, with its Mummies and machine that replicates the human intestines, the bar is set to become home to possibly the most expensive beer in the world, one that comes inside a tartan-wearing stoat…