What do you get when a duo of wine-loving fine-dining escapees team up with a couple of operators who turned dude food into “duuuude, now that’s food” in an old taqueria on increasingly tasty Johnston St in Colling-roy?

You get Bar Liberty, where Attica alumnus Banjo Harris Plane and Michael Bascetta have joined with US-expat Casey Wall and Manu Potoi (of Rockwell & Sons around the corner) to create a brains trust of wine, dine, and very good times.

You get a self-hewn dual-roomed space, the front full of light, a cosy back room that will come into its own in winter, and every table in the joint filled with somms from every wine bar and restaurant in town, sipping on a splash of this, trying a sip of that.

You get Rolling Stones and New Order on the stereo and briny fresh oysters and mussel dip on crisps to start and tarragon granita-topped spiced plums to end.

And, importantly, thanks to Harris Plane, one of the sharpest wine guys in town, you get a list of oenophillic beauty that’s quirky and cool – but where it’s scarily easy to get caught up in three-figure bottle abandon.

To go with, Wall’s ever-changing menu shows equal smarts, where excellent hand-chopped raw beef comes with pickled cherries under a nest of game chips for a clever take on tartare, and cured scallops come swimming in fermented buttermilk for a bowl of salty, creamy, drink-it-all-dry goodness.

Fried chicken skin sandwiches take care of the snackers, while steak served simply with mustard and onion placates the heartier of hunger.

It’s a place purpose built for the hospo-class of workers, eaters and drinkers, but where service though hip, is not haughty and it is all good fun.

What do you get when you go to Bar Liberty? As fully formed a night out as you want; a sip-snack prequel, a full-blown three courser, or cheese and a bottle of something fine later on. Elegant and smart, it’s yet another that’s turning 2016 into Melbourne’s Year of the Wine Bar.