"RED WINE"

• Melbourne Supper Club : 161 Spring Street, Melbourne, 3000

Wonderful woody long room full of bulging couches, battered armchairs and weathered floorboards that will make you want to light up that Cohiba. And you can, for Cuba is just one of the flavours round here. Fine wines and snacks are served in old-world ambience and a jazzy background score bubbles under. The design clincher though is a huge semicircular window looking out over Parliament House.

• Melbourne Wine Room : The George Hotel, 125 Fitzroy St, St Kilda, 3182

On one of St Kilda�s prominent intersections, the George Hotel houses Melbourne�s best-known wine rooms. As the face of St Kilda changes, nowhere is it more plain to see the contrasts in daily life than from the canvas 'pens' outside the George. Fast cars and designer clothes cruise past, heads are thrown back quaffing and laughing, whilst across the road the ambulances make regular pick ups at the other end of the fast lane. The big old bar area is divided into eating and non-eating areas, with an L-shaped bar backed with bottles. The acoustics are somewhere between a swimming pool without water, and the undercroft at Waverly Park - LOUD. There isn�t a soft surface in sight, but the echo doesn�t seem to put anyone off their conversation. It�s actually a beautiful space, with that rare combination of being cool and comfortable at the same time. Boutique beers on tap, or a vast selection of wines in which some reasonable value can be found. The bar menu is good (we had a fine minute steak with rocket and goat�s cheese) and the restaurant menu is varied, reliable and delicious. A much-loved St Kilda institution.

• Walters Wine Bar : Upper Level, Southgate, Southbank, 3006

With its stunning views over the Yarra and the city skyline, Walter's has firmly established itself as one of Melbournians' favourite restaurants. Located next to the Victorian Arts Centre Walter's is the perfect place to drop in for a drink and snack before or after the show or stay to enjoy the atmosphere of the bustling wine bar-bistro.

• Jimmy Watson's Wine Bar : 333 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053

A delightful courtyard dining is a favourite for many of Jimmy Watson's regulars. Jimmy Watson's is one of Melbourne's first wine bars and is home of the famous Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy.

Until fairly recently Jimmy Watson's was part-legend and part-institution, a wine bar specialising in very old vintages (many of them syrupy Victorian muscats and ports) and fairly ordinary food. Most of its customers were a lot older than their tastings. Then there was a revolution. Aided and abetted by his wife Judy and sons Nigel and Simon, Allan -- Jimmy's son and the long-time proprietor of this family business -- renovated the atrium-lit first-floor rooms and brought in master chef Steve Szabo.

The result is already a chapter in Melbourne's recent gastro-history. Szabo's cooking is imaginative, technically perfect and delightfully plated. The brick walls are white-bagged, and you sit on bentwood chairs and use worked linen. But the unique thrill here is to have access to an Aladdin's trove of very old wines that are warehoused behind the restaurant.

• Langton's Bar & Restaurant : 61 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, 3000

While Langton's plusher restaurant serves considerably more complex creations, the wine bar offers sensational food value -- simple, tasty and well-cooked dishes at low prices. Uniformly with the rest of this expansive basement, it's decorated in brooding chocolate colours. There's white linen for your lips but none on the square timber tables. Beneath your feet is glossy hardwood in herringbone pattern, and you use big and excellent, classic stainless-steel cutlery.

Langton's has an enormous and descriptive wine list for use in both the Wine Bar and the Restaurant. It is also very expensive, and, luckily for most of us, a supplementary card offers 10 reds and 10 whites by the glass, still mostly at high prices.

• 292 Wine Bar : 292 Lygon Street, Carlton, 3053

Here's a place that's fair dinkum about food, anyway, and should do wonders for Lygon Street's name. Until now only a couple of its neighbours were serving dishes that went anywhere near matching the street's enormous reputation. With plenty of seating outside -- common these days in this strip -- 292 hhas a step up through folded back, glazed, concertina doors the full width of its shop-sized frontage. Inside, there are swish terracotta tiles, comfy dark-stained hardwood chairs and tables, a central grained-wood bar, white walls and napkins, good cutlery and glassware -- pretty much what's required of a new bistro.

• The Agro : 64 Agro Street, South Yarra

A Blondwood interior, crackling open fire and a huge glassed area outside set the scene, with Stella Artois on tap and a touch of acid jazz make this wine bar a must if in the area of South Yarra. It has a great wine list where you can fine a few wines at reasonable prices.

• Young & Jackson's Hotel : Crn Flinder's & Swanston (Opposite Flinder's Station)

This is all class, but not for red wines, it is just a quite little bar (upstairs) and rather a great place to sit and chat with friends. Y & J's has become almost as famous a meeting place as 'under the clocks'. Many diggers during both world wars arranged to meet their mates afterwards at Young and Jackson's.

At the grand exhibition of 1880 held in the Exhibition Buildings, a nude painting, Chloe, by Chevalier Jules le Febvre had won a gold medal. When this painting was exhibited at the National Gallery in 1881, a scandal broke out. Chloe was much too brazen for the puritanical 'wowsers' of Melbourne society, and the trustees of the gallery were abused in the newspapers for allowing her to flaunt herself in the gallery - and on a Sunday afternoon!Messrs Young & Jackson were eventually able to buy Chloe in 1908 and hung her above the bar in their hotel. Custom increased dramatically. Young and Jackson's and Chloe have been inseparable ever since.