When it comes to Australian craft beer, there’s all manner of people who exude passion for the choice of tipple they desire. Whether it’s those who work in the industry or drinkers who can’t wait to get their hands on the next limited release, there’s no shortage of love.
Ready to help share that love – and spread it as far and as wide as possible – is online beer store, Wine Sellers Direct. While online shopping may be a modern approach to – and an increasingly competitive marketplace for – buying craft beer, Wine Sellers Direct does it while managing to hold onto many of the elements of a bricks-and-mortar bottleshop.
Largely, that’s because Wine Sellers is the online arm of Melbourne’s Nillumbik Cellars, which started out more than three decades ago as a small, independent, family run wine retailer in Diamond Creek and now also operates Vintage 72 and Greythorn Cellars in other previously craft beer starved suburbs of the city.
Sure, the online store has multitudes of wine, spirits and other drops on offer but when it comes to beer, the cyber shop remains just as stacked as the shelves of the physical stores. Importantly. this means the Wine Sellers Direct has access to Nillumbik Cellar’s multitude of fridges, cold storage being something the store has been dedicated to for some time. This allows those hop forward beers to be kept as fresh as possible before making it to your fridge via the front door.
Regarding the actual beers, Wine Sellers keeps a strong focus on local beers, whether that’s the core range of Australia’s more established craft breweries or limited releases from some of the country’s smallest. A sizeable number of international players are also regularly featured, ranging from the multitude of American and UK craft beers regularly washing up on our shores to timeless Belgian and German classics.
Despite Australia having a growing number of great independent bottleshops which focus on craft beer, there’s still plenty of regions of the country where drinkers have little to no access to the rising number of craft beers now available, hence the demand for online retailers. With Nillumbik Cellars’ online arm up and running and offering flat rates on postage, it should help get beers to places that traditionally have gone without, making it easier for them to indulge in beer love too.
Will Ziebell