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Tom O’Mara and Fiona Lim, the husband and wife team behind Wine Republic, will host a three day champagne festival in early December
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When she was 18-years-old, Fiona Lim was lucky enough to be served a bottle of vintage Agrapart & Fils at a dinner party. After one close encounter with the Côte des Blancs grower-producer Champagne, “it was love at first sip and I have not looked back since.”
Today Lim, along with her husband Tom O’Mara, heads up a wine region of her own, albeit on a much smaller scale. The couple now own three Wine Republic stores across Melbourne. The first opened on Brunswick St, Fitzroy in 2014 and in the years since they’ve expanded to High St, Northcote and Chapel St, Windsor, collecting a number of accolades along the way including Independent Wine Store of the Year 2014, New Australian Small Business of the Year 2015 and placing highly in nearly every major Australian retail design award in 2014.
The couple say they embarked on the journey with a mission to connect their local community with the country’s best boutique producers, eschewing mass market brands in favour of small batch products executed to arguably better results.
“We love championing and bringing our customer products like Champagnes that are hard to find and basically best kept secrets,” Lim told GRAZIA. “These producers spend all their time and money focusing on producing the best product possible and not purely on marketing like the big players. Hence not many people outside of the wine industry or serious collectors know about their existence. We want to change that. We want people to try these delicious Champagnes because we know that they will be converted.”
“On the anniversary of the day when we first started dating, my husband and partner for 18 years Tom, with whom I was skiing, stopped at a scenic spot and pulled out a surprise bottle of one of my favourite champagnes that we chilled in the snow. Dare I say it was heavenly”
Wine Republic co-founder Fiona Lim on her favourite champagne-centric memory
As part of the next phase of their campaign to raise the standard of sparkling consumption in their home city, Lim and O’Mara will this year host a free, three-day Champagne Festival this summer in collaboration with cult chocolatier Koko Black. Running from Friday December 9 until December 11 across the couple’s three stores, the festival promises attendees exposure to the industry’s hard-working underdogs – small-production growers in an already rarefied world where terroir reigns supreme.
“This is the best opportunity to get exposure to the various types of Champagnes out there from co-operative to tiny growers Champagnes,” says Lim, who has partnered with Koko Black on a curated selection of chocolates to pair with champagnes from brands such as Lamandier Bernier, Delamotte, Henriot, De Sousa and Thienot. Getting a coterie of brands of that caliber on board was also the most challenging aspect of the process, considering the limited numbers resulting from each vintage. The challenge, however, would also seem to be the most rewarding aspect of such an undertaking. “Mass market major brands are all about marketing not quality of the product. They are selling an image and really the quality of the product that you are buying is nothing compared to these boutique producers. It’s like saying what’s the difference between Starbucks and Single Origin Coffee.”
And while there’s no hesitating when it comes to choosing between those camps, narrowing it down from the selection of boutique bottles on offer will require a great deal more consideration.
“I do have a fond love for Agrapart,” says Lim, invoking the champagne that started it all. “But Olivier Honriot is a new favourite and you can’t beat Delamotte, being the sister boutique house of mystical Champagne Salon.”
You can find out more information on the Melbourne Champagne Festival here.
Tile and cover image: Supplied
