—by Paul Best
A new members’ club for wine drinkers, founded in London, is set to raise a glass to Melbourne’s proud history as a commercial bastion that knows how to mix business with pleasure.
Grant Ashton may run the world’s first group of private members’ clubs exclusively devoted to wine lovers, but he confesses the idea was not his. When he established the original 67 Pall Mall in London’s St James in 2015, the city had already been home to two dedicated wine clubs for some time, while the concept of private members’ clubs dated back, more than 150 years.
“They were a big thing in London in the 1870s and 1880s,” Ashton, an ex-banker, says over the phone from Singapore, where he is now based. “At that time, London had 200-300 gentlemen’s clubs.” He had initially thought to open a wine bar with a few like-minded mates as a means of offloading some of their collective overgrown wine collections before he set up 67 Pall Mall, at the address of “an old bank building going for a song”. At the same time, he had grown frustrated at restaurants’ “young” wine lists and limited selections. But he is sympathetic:
“Few restaurants can afford to lay down vintages anymore. It’s bonkers economics. If you run the model commercially, it doesn’t work.”
Ashton was also unhappy at paying through the nose for wine at overly inflated prices. As he explains, restaurants need to return a 70 per cent gross profit margin on food and beverage to remain solvent. This is why we pay three or more times the retail price when we sit down and let someone else do the pouring. His response was to set up a club that offered not just a couple of hundred but several thousand different wines from more than 40 countries, with 1000 by the glass, “a good age profile” and minimal markups.
“Wine is at the core of everything we do, and we aim to produce the best wine list in the country,” he explains. “Our by-the-glass program is front and centre of that, [offering] the biggest list in the world.” The concept proved a timely aligning of the stars that Ashton says struck a chord with other wine enthusiasts. “It’s why we’ve been so successful,” he says.
“We thought perhaps 500, 600 people in London might think a wine club isn’t a bad idea. We were stunned by how many loved it. We now have 4000 members.”
The advent of Coravin—a then-revolutionary system that allows wines to be poured without opening the bottle (thereby preventing oxidation and waste)—proved well timed. Another stroke of luck that contributed to the brand’s early success was the resurgence of private members’ clubs in London, a phenomenon that has also gained pace in the US and Australia post-pandemic as people seek out immersive experiences and a renewed sense of belonging with like minds. “We got lucky with an upswing in people becoming increasingly mobile in how they work and spend their social life outside the home,” Ashton explains. “That has fed into a big uptake of this new style of members’ club.”
Following his early good fortune with the London HQ, Ashton expanded the concept to Verbier in Switzerland in 2020 and then Singapore in 2022. There’s also an en primeur membership in Hong Kong, which, in place of a bricks-andmortar club, brings together a community of passionate wine drinkers in partner locations that subscribe to the 67 Pall Mall ethos. Ashton has plans to open several more venues, including in Burgundy and Bordeaux, as well as across Asia (Shanghai, Bangkok, Jakarta), plus the southern hemisphere’s first outpost, which will launch in Melbourne’s CBD in mid-2025.
As to why he chose Melbourne over Sydney, Ashton says the Victorian capital won out for its established international reputation as a gastronomic city, and for its natural alignment with European and broader wine culture. “We see ourselves building on Melbourne’s existing [food and wine] culture,” he explains. This latest 67 Pall Mall will span the top four levels of the 16-storey former office tower at 85 Spring Street, originally known as Esanda House, at the historic east end of the CBD. Entering on level 14, members and guests encounter a soaring 7.5m temperature-controlled wine tower. The double-height space will offer contemporary all-day dining, including classics from the London flagship such as Scotch eggs and beef Wellington as well as a selection of sharing dishes inspired by Melbourne’s wine bar culture. Level 15 will house a grill-style restaurant with guéridon service and private dining rooms, while the floor above will be devoted to champagne and oysters, plus a whisky bar offering 400 different drops.
The new outpost will launch with a wine list of about 5000 wines categorised as being in their “optimal drinking window”, with at least half of these Australian and around 1000 Victorian. Membership will bestow access to vertical tastings—think a museum release of Henschke’s Hill of Grace or the rarest Blanc de Blancs from Champagne Salon, or a sommelier-guided tour through a dozen different Burgundy crus.
Ashton emphasises that 67 Pall Mall is not some kind of British expat or elite business club. “We’ve had people drink Château Latour 1959 with a burger. That’s fine if that’s how you roll,” he says, adding there are members in Singapore who do not even drink. While its offering and demographic mix might have a modern sensibility, the brand’s signature design aesthetic nods to the notion of heritage and, much like a fine Bordeaux, is intended to get better with age. “There’s a classic quality that underlies everything we do,” Ashton decrees. “We build clubs to be there for at least 50 years. People think 67 Pall Mall Singapore has been there 20 years, not two.”