Rare, iconic Rhone wines, poured by the glass at Reine & La Rue

A unicorn walks into a bar. There are wine lists, and then there are wine moments; fleeting, slightly audacious, unassumingly historic. Reine & La Rue's latest by-the-glass feature is quietly making history in what could be considered a first in Australia, prizing open a trove of unicorn wines for guests to enjoy, but only while they last.

For a limited time, the Melbourne restaurant is opening an extraordinary collection from the Reynaud family estates of the Southern Rhône, including the revered and iconic Château Rayas, alongside wines from Château de Fonsalette and Château des Tours. For many wine lovers, these are names more often whispered than tasted — bottles that disappear into private cellars, restaurant allocations, or the hands of those with the means to buy at the very pointy end of the market.

At Reine & La Rue, however, they are being poured by the glass.

For Steve Senturk, Group Sommelier at Edition Hospitality, the inspiration was simple:

"I wish someone had done it for me."

These are wines that most sommeliers, let alone consumers, rarely get to taste unless they buy the whole bottle. With prices now placing many of these cuvées out of reach, the idea was to create access without stripping away reverence. Using Coravin, the team pours measures as accessible as 50ml, allowing guests to travel across estates, sites and vintages without committing to a full bottle.

"It's impossible to be knowledgeable with some of these wines nowadays because of the price tag. Wine is meant to be drunk. We are too protective with some bottles."

That is the quiet radicalism of this list. It is not about spectacle for spectacle's sake. It is about generosity, education and the belief that great wine should still be experienced, discussed and shared.

Château Rayas is, of course, the headline act. It is one of the most singular wines of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, known for its haunting and beguiling perfume, pale colour, finesse, oxidative style and unmistakable paradoxical identity. Its maker, Emmanuel Reynaud, is a man of great myth, legend and regard, whose wines demonstrate personality, precision and unique interpretation as his signature hallmark.

Steve is equally passionate about the broader Reynaud family story. He speaks with affection for Château de Fonsalette, which he describes as underrated and often deeply moving.

"Rayas is the flagship, but Fonsalette is handled in exactly the same way in the cellar. It just shows a different expression of the region, a different site. Those are the wines that often blow me away, maybe because the expectation isn't as high."

The idea of site, expression and personality sits at the heart of the Reine & La Rue Coravin experience. These are not simply expensive bottles. They are wines shaped by place, by an idiosyncratic philosophy, and by a producer whose style cannot be replicated. To taste them side by side is to understand not only hierarchy, but nuance inexplicable by words.

Rather than presenting the wines through a closed-door dinner for a handful of collectors, Reine & La Rue has chosen a more open format. Guests can select different pour sizes, move at their own pace, and return to the list over multiple visits. For Steve, that flexibility matters. A single wine dinner might allow only ten or twelve people to taste the range, but it would "sacrifice" the bottles in one evening. By pouring with Coravin, the restaurant can extend the experience to many more guests, over an indefinite period of time.

The programme is also a powerful training opportunity. Before the launch, the Reine & La Rue team tasted through the wines together — a rare chance for younger sommeliers to smell, taste, compare and understand bottles that many professionals may never encounter during their entire careers, side by side.

For diners, that education directly benefits their experience, as Steve and his team saw with a previous rare Burgundy feature. Guests became more engaged, more curious and more willing to ask questions. This in turn commands the wine team's knowledge base further; guests ask unexpected questions they would not normally pose during a regular service.

"It's not about quantity. It's about quality. People want to drink good wine, but not necessarily a lot of it."

That shift feels important. As iconic wines become more expensive, the danger is that they become cultural artefacts rather than living things — collected, traded, stored and admired; relics from afar, but rarely drunk. Programmes like this push back against the tide of gatekeeping. They make the unattainable possible.

And possibility matters.

A guest may not buy a $3,000 bottle, but they might feel inspired to treat themselves to a taste of 50ml. They might taste a wine from a producer they had only ever read about. They might compare Rayas with Fonsalette. They might ask a question that opens a door to the Southern Rhône, to Grenache, to legendary winemaking, to the strange and ethereal way certain wines become unforgettable.

For Reine & La Rue, this is also about building trust.

"We prefer to make things interesting for our guests and for our team. We want to offer a wine program that is exciting and constantly evolving."

That philosophy continues next, with a planned focus on Jura — another region where rarity, personality and curiosity collide.

For now, though, this Reynaud family list reads like a love letter to the Southern Rhône, to one of wine's most revered families, and to the idea that great bottles are at their best not when they are hidden away, but when they are shared and poured.

Reine & La Rue
Group Sommelier: Steve Senturk, Edition Hospitality | Melbourne, Australia

Words by Csilla Swain
Brand Manager, APAC — Coravin