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You can have your beachy sunsets and rural mountaintop vistas. I’ll take this evening glow, ebbing to golden magic at Sardinas, 200 metres from Reservoir’s Regent Station on the Mernda Line. It’s not a typical postcard setting but it’s my kind of city panorama, everything glinting, that feeling you’ll be eaten up by the night unless you eat it first.

The dwindling light beams into the charming new wine bar, liquor shop and flower store that is over the road from frolicsome three-year-old tapas bar La Pinta. These are sibling businesses in more ways than one.

The snacks at Sardinas are cooked at La Pinta and finished here, some of the wine on tap flows in both venues and the pig that’s turned into braised shoulder or chorizo with smoked spring garlic at the tapas bar is also lovingly crafted into cured pork at Sardinas.

La Pinta owner and chef Adam Racina launched Sardinas with his girlfriend Brooke Mora, a florist who works with Australian-grown blooms. They stumbled upon the space – an old travel agent with residence at rear – while looking for a place to live. “But I want to be a bar,” the premises whispered. And so it is.

Mora’s gorgeous floral arrangements are in one corner. There are bottles of wine lined up on cast concrete shelves that match the peachy walls and there’s a curing fridge for hanging charcuterie in various stages of maturation. It’s all art but there’s also a shadow-shaping flurry of suspended porcelain by local sculptor Jennifer Conroy-Smith.

A few tables, bar stools and a friendly welcome make Sardinas a lovely place to sit, maybe before a La Pinta meal, maybe just because.

If you’re a pork person, you’ll want the sliced meats, all from free-range pigs Racina buys whole, perhaps the jamon he’s cured for two years, streaky capocollo or rich lonza.

Just nibbling? Walnuts tumbled with cumin, star anise, cayenne pepper and rapadura sugar are spicy, toasty and ridiculously moreish.

You’d expect a place called Sardinas to do sardines. The fish are prepared Venetian-style, briefly cooked, then preserved with onion, vinegar, wine and currants. Sweet, sour and succulent, they’re a winner on La Pinta’s sourdough toast.

House-made lavash is served with local cheese, a wedge of classic potato tortilla needs nothing more than a fork, and when you want something sweet, there’s bitter-crusted Basque cheesecake ready to scoop you in its embrace.

If you’re under the misapprehension that wine on tap is the swill from the bottom of the vat, you need to come here to try tipples from credible small-batch producers such as Little Reddie and Limus. Sip them in house or take refillable bottles home.

Whether you’re here to shop or stay, Sardinas is a simple but sublime store, snackery and summer-ready suntrap.