The comedian Matt Okine opens a welcoming wine point in the south of Brisbane
The premises (and their dogs) are flocking in this former post office for rare and precious – but cheap – at affordable prices from Australia, France, the Czech Republic, Canada and beyond.
Readers who follow the Australian comedy could associate Matt Okine more easily and the wine with his role in a sketch on the Nazeem Hussain series Legally brown.
Called the white person’s dance lessons, it was one of the best moments of the show of the show of the show. In it, Okine arrives in a secret place to learn from Hussain and Ronny Chieng the art of “dancing like a white person”, that is, without rhythm or grace.
It is not until Hussain and Chieng make him guide some glasses of red wine that does it.
But it turns out that Okine has a more sophisticated relationship with wine – at least in 2025. It is one of the owners of LPO, who was opened in Tarragindi last week. In collaboration with him in the sector is Dan Wilson, an expert chef who, pre-platform, managed kitchens and has opened his headquarters, Dandy, in London.
“Matt and I are old friends of the University (in Brisbane),” says Wilson. “I had attended someone who studied law, who then had a close relationship for a couple of years with Matt’s most expensive friend, Paul.
“So Matt, Paul and I would spend a lot of time together in the mid -1920s, I suppose, before everyone started working properly and trying to have a career.”
LPO’s original idea was born from a Christmas party to Dandy in which Okine participated.
“He shakes and is a room full of Copenhagen chef hotshots and throughout London, France,” says Wilson. “He was saying:” How can we do something like that, where we can sit, drink and meet people? “
“When he returned to Brisbane a couple of years ago, it was that kind of things that was missing in the neighborhood: a nice place to go to drink wine and be treated like a human being.”
LPO is abbreviated to a “local post office” after Okine and his wife Belinda Rabe, they found an old post office for rent in Windmill Street.
In recent decades, Brisbane has suffered from a relative lack of small locaries for food and drinks. But there can be rich collected in the old centers of shops on the outskirts Franco as Tarragindi, who are now populated by young professionals and families looking for clichés to eat and drink.
“It’s all exactly,” says Wilson. “This is the beauty of this space. Build is simple, the rent is convenient, the owners are fantastic and the neighbors are really friendly.”
Rabe took care of most of the design, adding a water -green facade that captures the feeling of a French wine bar or a coffee. Inside, they are walls of layers, wooden shelves for the 160 vintages currently on display (Wilson and Okine hope to push it soon at 300), polished concrete floors and pot plants to add a bucolic touch. In the middle of the space, there is a common table designed to allow guests to interact with each other.
“The other day we had people of our age or more young, 30 years old, with a conversation involved with some couples in the late 1950s,” says Wilson. “Everyone’s dogs are bouncing and all connect on the strangeness of the wine and their excitement shared where they come from and who they are. It is truly an adorable thing.”
As for wine, attention focuses on a minimum intervention decreases with a division of about 60-40 between international and Australian producers.
Wilson has leaned on his profound connections both in Australia and abroad to get some intoxicated drops. You could take a bottle of a terrosa and funky julien coertois origin Orbois-Romorantin from Loira Valley, a herbaceous and aged rosé amphora of the A & C Ainsworth Wines a Daylesford, or a vibrant and vibrant red gazette Trilli of Australian Trish Nelson in the Lazio region in Daylesford.
“We also have wines from Canada – they are producing extraordinary Pinot up there – and some things of the Czech Republic,” says Wilson. “Only a lot of things from vinification regions that are often not considered relevant or accessible.”
The LPO license means that there will be a rotating selection of four white and four red wines next to the glass. And it focuses on the maintenance of things at affordable prices, with some bottles that go less than $ 20 – all the better to make this neighborhood destination where the premises will return.
“Everyone entered and said: ‘Wow, F – K, things are really convenient here”, which is perhaps a little about, “says Wilson, laughing.” But it’s not just about making money, but also of having fun. “
In the future, Wilson and Okine will require a change of use of their license, allowing them to convert a room on the back into a tasting room with a small kitchen.
“At that point, we can also extend in front and start making other drinks, as you can with those auxiliary licenses.”
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Matt Shea He is the publisher of food and culture at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and publisher in general at the Brisbane sheet of sheet and wrote for Escape, Qantas Magazine, The Guardian, JetStar Magazine and Silverkris, among many others.
