Guest chefs, including MoVida’s Frank Camorra, are putting the seasonal spotlight on Piper Street Wine Company.

Each menu at Piper Street Wine Company is a seasonal window onto a chef’s talents.

Owned by Brendan Lane, the winemaker behind the Musk Lane label turned hospo everyman, the Kyneton wine bar and restaurant keeps things interesting with a changing roster of guest chefs taking over the kitchen for a few months at a time.

“Kyneton is a small town, and locals like to share the love,” says Lane. “This gives people a reason to revisit, but it’s also born from a genuine desire to collaborate.”

When Lane opened it in 2022, it was purely a wine bar. He had started Musk Lane wine in 2015 and moved it to Kyneton in 2019; it made sense to focus on the juice.

But maybe the influence of the hallowed real estate took over. The Piper Street location used to be occupied by Source Dining, and before that the storied Annie Smithers Bistrot. Now it’s a place where food and wine share top billing.

Co-head chefs have trod the boards since the start of the year. Shaun Clancy was previously at Fitzroy’s Amarillo, while Hal Riches hails from Di Stasio. The pair have turned the menu into a time share arrangement. The first three months of the year explored Riches’ Italian bent, while currently it displays Clancy’s way with French comfort food via an elevated bistro menu dripping in nostalgia: steak tartare, cheesy gougère pastries, hearty cassoulet and lamb navarin (stew) with sweet baby vegetables and the all-important buttery potato mash.

Kicking off from the second week of July until September, Frank Camorra of Melbourne’s acclaimed Spanish tapas bars MoVida will take the winter menu on an Iberian spin.

“It’s Frank stepping outside of the MoVida brand, exploring dishes that are more bistro, humbler in focus.” Expect jamon and gildas, spanner crab crumpets and Moorish-leaning lamb skewers, smoked prawns and clams with white beans and fall-apart braised ox tail in fino sherry.

“There are a lot of Spanish braises that will be great for the cold weather,” says Lane, who is at pains to point out it’s not a MoVida pop-up. “With Hal and Shaun, we’re quite capable of pulling if off ourselves but we all love a collaboration where we learn something from each other.”

The wine focus will also change with each new menu iteration. Currently the by-the-glass list is bursting with interest-grabbing Gallic varietals like gamay, Chablis and savagnin. For Camorra’s residency you can expect a good showing of Albarino, fino sherry and Musk Lane’s own syrah and malvasia, a “bone dry” iteration of the Spanish white grape.

As for what the food future holds at Piper Street Wine Company, it’s a case of watch this space. “In spring we might decide to channel some British comfort food – a real St John vibe. If Fergus Henderson is free, we’d love to host him.”

PIPER STREET WINE COMPANY BRENDAN LANE
STORY BY LARISSA DUBECKI
PHOTOS BY PETER TARASIUK

Piper Street Wine Company
Brendan Lane
70-72 Piper St, Kyneton
@piperstwineco
piperstwineco.com