Since opening in 2017, Wildflower Brewing & Blending has bloomed into one of the most innovative and fascinating breweries in the country. Founded by US expat Topher Boehm and his Australian brother-in-law Chris Allen, it’s also unlike any other you’ve been to: there’s no core range made up of hoppy pales and IPAs or food trucks slinging burgers, and they’ve definitely never, ever made a chilli coffee coriander milkshake IPA just for fun.
Instead, this Marrickville institution taps into a more rustic Old World school of brewing. Inspired by traditional Belgian styles like lambics and saisons, head brewer Topher crafts au naturel ales fermented with wild yeasts he’s collected from native flowers around New South Wales (hence, the brewery’s name).
Those beers are then aged in the many oak barrels that adorn Wildflower’s charming timber-beamed taproom and blended together as they mature over years. Served as is, or often laced with subtle hop additions, wine grapes, fruit or wild honeycomb, the results are complex and constantly evolving
For non-beer drinkers, the options are just as interesting with a fine wine list, cider, Poor Toms whisky, sparkling teas and house-made orange cordial.
The seeds for Wildflower were first sown back in 2009 when Texan-born Topher arrived in Sydney to settle with his Aussie girlfriend Bernadette (now his wife and business partner). An avid homebrewer, he cut his teeth at Sydney’s Flat Rock Brew Café and Batch Brewing Co before the discovery of wild yeasts changed his life forever.
“Making beers with wild yeasts pushed me beyond where I was… my early beers were unlike anything I had ever tasted,” Topher wrote when he first opened Wildflower. “I fell in love with letting go, submitting to nature and co-creating with her.”
Inspired, he interned overseas at some of the best breweries in the business - Brasserie Thiriez in France, Partizan Brewing in London and Jester King in Texas - before he and Chris decided to open their own operation in a 19th century former foundry in Marrickville.
Visiting Wildflower is like stepping into a beautiful time warp. Exposed wooden beams complement the towering wall of 500-litre barrels alongside tables and chairs handmade by Topher. There’s a roaring wood fire, vinyl LPs on the record player, beautiful glassware, and dried native flowers hung on the walls.
Further back, by the barnyard door, you’ll spy Topher’s vintage and much-envied brewhouse with its antique copper kettle, wooden mash tun (often filtered through straw) and a traditional coolship, which is like a shallow swimming pool for cooling and inoculating beer wort.
The brewery’s elegant beers are matched by an equally epicurean offering from their in-house kitchen, a later and very welcome addition to the business. Curated by Colin Wood, who also runs his Goldstreet Dairy micro-cheesery on-site, the menu serves up delicious share plates of arancini, terrines, confit chicken and Colin's delicious grilled Jersey cheese that’s made within 48 hours of leaving the farm.
“To me, it's just exactly the food that I always wanted with our beer,” is how head of hospitality Nemesia Dale-Cully describes it. “A lot of brewery food is quite formulaic with burgers and wings, and we just wanted to offer something that is a little more special, that represents the producers, growers and farmers that we love to work with.”
Like its namesake, Wildflower keeps growing in unexpected, exciting ways. In July 2024, they announced they’d permanently co-share the taproom with GABS Hottest 100 winners Mountain Culture under the joint moniker of Village (which takes its name from their long-running gueuze-inspired collab beer).
The two breweries might seem like an odd couple at first - Wildflower classic and old school; Mountain Culture flamboyant and ultra-modern - but Topher and head Mountaineer DJ McCready share a long history. Both American and married to Australians with young families, they’ve been friends for more than a decade, have collaborated on beers and breweries, and share a deep love of innovation and experimentation.
To celebrate the new union, Wildflower installed a new tap system too, serving ten Mountain Culture beers alongside ten of their own, with glycol cooling, multiple serving temperatures, and five Czech-style Lukr side-pour taps for lagers. That makes it the perfect place to enjoy one of Topher’s barrel-aged wild ales, followed by a mighty Mountain Culture IPA with some delicious share plates to boot.
“We’re calling it ‘friends with benefits’,” Topher says of the partnership. “We’re really excited. It’s going to be an awesome place to share with people.”
Jason Treuen
