Clever Polly's

Wine Australia may have decreed the only wine you're allowed to call ''orange'' these days must come from Orange in New South Wales, but it's hard to imagine the wine-loving hipster hordes, so emphatically besotted by whiffy, funky orange (or ''natural'' or ''minimal intervention'') wines, obeying the order. Certainly at Clever Polly's, a new wine bar and bottle shop in West Melbourne with a nearly 100 per cent natural wine list, ''orange'' (rather than Orange) is bandied around with carefree abandon.

It's that kind of place - engaging and enthusiastic about its passions, while avoiding any hint of dogma or evangelical fervour for the natural wine cause. A detailed discussion of the genre is certainly available to those in need of education/reassurance but you could very easily just use this place as a comfortable, hospitable local, a place to have a quiet beer under the warm and flattering glow of glass-shaded Edison globes.

There's definitely an attractively DIY sensibility to the fitout of the small shopfront a few blocks west of the Queen Vic Market. A mottled, polished concrete floor, chairs upholstered in a cute, retro-looking orange fabric clustered around a hefty communal table, a recycled timber bar, brick walls painted white, and a tiny kitchen that shares space with the booze behind the bar all help with the general theme of hand crafting.

The wall opposite the bar is lined with timber shelves filled with bottles because Clever Polly's is also a takeaway bottleshop, a good place to remember if you have friends who will be impressed when you show up at their door clutching a bottle of 2012 Dirty and Rowdy Semillon from California's Napa Valley.

Drinking in is both fun and flexible. There's a generous selection by the glass or carafe and prices generally hover within the realm of possibility (for novices), though some of the Old World stuff ploughs through the $100 barrier and keeps going.

For those who think drinking wine that can smell like cider and taste like beer is not for them there is a decent list of craft beer plus cider, interesting spirits from small distillers (Hellyers Road Peated Whisky from Burnie in Tasmania) and a short but compelling list of sake that also tends towards the minimal intervention, no-filtration path.

It's certainly worth eating here. Chef Adam Qureshi (ex-Brooks) is behind the bar, pulling together some original, wine-friendly snacks that range from miso marinated barramundi served with silverbeet stalks to slippery jack mushrooms and liver flavoured with coffee and a superb ''crudites salad'', really just an assembly of super-fresh, super-seasonal raw vegetables served with a lemon verbena-flavoured dressing. The ''great ingredients with minimal fiddling'' approach sits comfortably with the drinks list, as does the quality selection of cured meats and well-treated cheese.

Whether or not you're a fan (or don't care one way or the other) about orange - sorry, natural - wine, Clever Polly's is a good place to spend some time.

Drink this … With nearly every wine on the list made with ''minimal intervention'', this is a great place to bone up on your natural/amber/orange wine knowledge.
Eat this … Wallaby carpaccio with apple and macadamia.
Check this … All wine (and sake, beer and spirits) is available to take away as well as to drink in.