A visit to Famelia isn’t your typical wine experience – and that’s exactly what Owner Amelia Birch wants. Birch is rejecting the sometimes-daunting process of purchasing or ordering wine in favour of one that is inviting and, most importantly, approachable for any level of vinous knowledge. “Famelia is intuitive and it’s consumer focused,” she says. “It’s about feeling safe enough in an environment to challenge yourself and learn by pushing past the idea that you might feel uncomfortable about not knowing something.”
Hospitality speaks to Birch about her 15-plus-year career in the industry and how it’s shaped her approach to curating a wine-centric experience at Famelia.
Amelia Birch discovered just how much she enjoyed conversations around wine during her time at Sydney’s Glass Brasserie. Under the wing of sommeliers and industry veterans John Clancy and Kim Bickley, Birch would partake in daily wine tastings as part of pre-service briefings. “We’d try our wine and talk about it, and I just really loved those moments,” she says. It became a bit of a creative pursuit.”
It was at Glass where Birch also learned the vitality of the art of conversation when it comes to providing wine service. “You can know everything about the making of a bottle,” says Birch. “But if you don’t know how to listen, ask questions, be curious, and value matching a person with a wine, then you’re not a sommelier in my mind.”
After Glass, Birch opened The Book Kitchen in Surry Hills, which is where she first wanted to implement a hybrid bottle shop/wine bar. But licencing hurdles and a forced closure due to light rail developments deterred the initial idea.
Instead, she joined her family’s wedding venue Merribee which saw Birch launch her own wine consulting business, Your Personal Sommelier. Following the pandemic lockdowns, Birch continued Your Personal Sommelier at her terrace in Surry Hills. “I think that’s what really moved me into wine-first mode,” she says. “I started to have thoughts like, ‘Oh, it would be fun to do this with more people’.” So the hunt for a space where Birch could offer her expertise and love of wine on a larger scale began. Soon enough, she found a vacant spot on Enmore Road in Sydney’s Inner West, which is where Famelia has been up and running for the last year.
Joining the wave of hybrid venues opening across the country, Famelia offers both a wine bar and bottle shop experience under the one roof. Guests can come in and buy a bottle with help from the Famelia team; sit down for a drink and snack; opt for an educative wine flight; or join one of the venue’s educational events.
For Birch, the choice to have the hybrid set-up came with rethinking her usual approach to hospitality. “The wine bar and bottle shop are not individual things in this context, which is quite unfamiliar to our world,” she says. “It’s almost a bit of an unlearning and relearning. What do multi-purpose venues mean? Are they individual things at different times, or are they just one new thing that’s intuitive and based on what we need?”
So far, Birch has found that observing how guests interact with the space has been the key to understanding her offering. “It’s a bit of a start-up mentality where you don’t know what your product is and who your customers are,” she says. “But you respond to what’s going on around you rather than having an idea and being inflexible.”
While wine is the core product at Famelia, Birch focuses on making the atmosphere approachable for guests. “It’s about the wine, but it’s also about the experience – I don’t want people to feel excluded from that,” she says. “At Famelia it’s the feeling that it will be ok if you ask a question or say something stupid – no-one’s going to judge you.”
Famelia’s monthly wine flight list fosters a sense of inclusivity and education. Guests can choose from a selection of 12 bottles to taste as part of a three-glass flight. “The risk and the barriers to entry are taken away [with a wine flight]: price, varietal, and quantity,” explains Birch. “So that facilitates an environment where people learn and experience something fun.”
Wines that feature on the list and in the bottle shop are solely made by female winemakers, wife and husband teams, or women-led wineries. Birch does this to promote wines that might not get as much exposure. “There is an automatic ‘in’ to restaurants and bottle shops for certain winemakers because of networks and connections, and that’s all fine,” she says. “But what it doesn’t breed is the opportunity for difference. I feel honoured to have a space that can champion them, because why the f*** not?”
Birch says her wine curation is a two-way street where she also learns from her guests. “I’m trying to be a bottle shop that has a curated selection based on listening to what people want and getting feedback, while also being price conscious and supporting women winemakers – it’s a really nice ecosystem to be in.”
Birch hopes the style of offering at Famelia will cater to different budgets and desired experiences. “A really important thing for me is that there are different ways of interacting with our product,” she says. “You can have a $30 glass of Chardonnay (which is quite a lot) or you can have a flight of three half glasses for $33 which might include that $30 Chardonnay. There’s value for money in that, and it’s also an experience.”
It’s evident that a visit to Famelia is not in any way intimidating. Rather, Birch has crafted a deeply personal experience. “I love talking about wine and I love creating spaces for people to feel comfortable and safe in challenging themselves,” she says.
Birch is also proud of Famelia’s individuality, and believes it makes the venue stand out to guests. “I think a lot of people go into hospo thinking it has to look sound a particular way, but the thing that really sells is people being themselves.”
Next time you find yourself wanting to learn more about wine, buy a bottle or two, or simply enjoy warm ambience and a good glass, take a trip to Famelia and experience Birch’s years of industry knowledge; passion for sharing and learning; and love for the ever-evolving scope of wine.
