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The Age Good Food Guide Bar of the Year finalists 2017

Good Food Team

Romeo Lane in Melbourne. Try a Greenpoint herbal rye Manhattan
Romeo Lane in Melbourne. Try a Greenpoint herbal rye Manhattan Kristoffer Paulsen

If you weren't drinking something blue, tropical, small batch or skin contact-y this year, you were doing it wrong.

It was a year rich in expressive wines, small batch everything and – praise be to the gods of good times – a step back from the history books and towards the party supplies.

Behold a tiny tiki revival and the growing trend towards fast, high-end drinks that let you get away from the bar and over to the jukebox.

Raise a glass to our finalists of the year, who make serious drinking fun.

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Bar Liberty

What do you get when you unite sommeliers from Attica with the team behind Rockwell and Sons? You get Liberty, and, depending how deeply you drink from Banjo Harris Plane's well of frontier and often natural wines, craft beers, and whiskey aged in model Corvettes, a little death too. Come on Sunday afternoons when light pours over the minimalist room and industry folks nerd out over reasonably priced bottles of Jura chardonnay and chicken skin crackling BLTs.

234 Johnston Street, Fitzroy, no phone, barliberty.com

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - JANUARY 29:  The interior of Heartbreaker bar in the cbd on January 29, 2016 in Melbourne, Australia.  (Photo by Paul Jeffers/Fairfax Media)Heartbreaker. Supplied for use by Fairfax Media. Age Good Food Guide 2017.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - JANUARY 29: The interior of Heartbreaker bar in the cbd on January 29, 2016 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Paul Jeffers/Fairfax Media)Heartbreaker. Supplied for use by Fairfax Media. Age Good Food Guide 2017.Supplied

Heartbreaker

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Masterminded by the crew from the Everleigh, this shambolic late-night dive is like an uptown heiress slumming it at a downtown punk bar. The indie jukebox blasts Bowie, vinyl booths are bathed in red neon, the toilets are best avoided, and the drinks are mostly shots and US beers – though there's the Everleigh's four signature bottled cocktails over columns of purest ice. In short, it's a hot mess, but we couldn't love it more.

234a Russell Street, Melbourne, 03 9041 0856, heartbreakerbar.com.au

Marion

Andrew McConnell's new Gertrude Street wine bar is excellent. What a shock. Sommelier Liam O'Brien's list has all the might of the Cutler cellar (joined at the hip), while the kitchen serves a menu with the same produce-driven bent as next door, but it's simpler stuff – plates of padron peppers, crab and avruga on rye crisps, and an on temp steak – that draws you into the glowing white, bronze and tan space for just one drink that's never just one drink.

53 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, 03 9419 6262, marionwine.com.au

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Romeo Lane, home of Melbourne's best cut glass decanter collection.
Romeo Lane, home of Melbourne's best cut glass decanter collection.Kristoffer Paulsen

Romeo Lane

Got a date? Get them hither to this Chinatown cocktail bar where we're yet to find fault. There's a not a single drink you don't want from the tight list of masterfully crafted cocktails playing on the nuances of sherries, ginger juice and vermouths, nor an etched coupe you don't want to pilfer or a song from the jazz soundtrack that isn't thematically en pointe in a room of rich dark woods with firelight twinkling off decanters. Add some d'Affinois cheese and high five yourself.

1 Crossley Street, Melbourne 03 9639 8095 romeolane.com.au

Lola cocktail at Union Electric
Lola cocktail at Union Electric Kristoffer Paulsen
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Union Electric

It's hard to pick the best part: the '90s hip-hop, the portrait of Bill Murray, the fact you can get dumplings in from New Kum Den? Maybe the half open-to-sky set-up, great for sunny afternoons, but probably it's the party bar vibe colliding with deadly serious drinks – beers, wines and gins from small craft producers and and fresh fruit-forward cocktails that might be described as modern-tiki.

13 Heffernan Lane, Melbourne, 0450 186 466, unionelectric.com.au

The Age Good Food Guide 2017 award night, presented by Citi and Vittoria, is on September 12. The Guide will be on sale in newsagents and bookstores from September 13, with all book purchases receiving free access to the new Good Food app.

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