Bar Two’s Nate Cairns to open US dive bar Midnight Rambler

“Good old-fashioned boozer”: Blues and rock music, top-shelf bourbon, whisky and tequila, and American craft beer will be the order of the day as a top Tassie wine guru branches out.

Midnight Rambler will open at Brisbane St, Launceston, on Saturday, October 22. Picture: Supplied

One of Tasmania’s top wine gurus is set to branch out, transforming a disused bar which formerly housed functions for a nearby hotel into an “American-style speakeasy dive”.

Nate Cairns, who opened Brisbane St, Launceston wine bar Bar Two in 2018, said Midnight Rambler was influenced by his years working in the southern US state of Texas.

He alternatively described Midnight Rambler, located in the former Northern Bar in Earl’s Court – which served for a time as one of Best Western Plus’ function spaces – as a “dive bar”, “juke joint” and a “real good old-fashioned boozer”.

He said attendees could expect “blues rock, real top-shelf whisky, bourbon, and tequila, American craft beer you can’t get anywhere else in Tasmania, a good selection of wine – basically, full of top-shelf booze”.

Oh, and don’t forget the “old-school complimentary bar nuts”.

Mr Cairns said the Earl’s Court location had served Bar Two well and hoped the same will be said of Midnight Rambler.

“When I was initially looking for a place for Bar Two, I always had in mind wanted to be close to the (Princess) Theatre,” he said.

“It’s a good location, a laneway to me is a good thing for bars, maybe not a good thing for every other retail segment.

“I’d just been looking around for two–three years (for somewhere for Midnight Rambler) and I kept looking at the door at the end of the alleyway.

Midnight Rambler will open at Brisbane St, Launceston, on Saturday, October 22. Picture: Supplied

“I was asking around and got told there was a bar in there but it hasn’t been open since the late-1980s. It took about a year of negotiations.”

Mr Cairns, whose family owns Liffey’s Tasmanian Organic Wines, said his whole career has been spent working in bars, clubs and restaurants and he spent about three years working in Texan venues in the late-2000s, prior to his moving home to Tasmania for good in 2016.

“I got inspiration from a lot of different places I’ve been to in the US, that really underground, speakeasy, bluesy rock style venue,” he said.

“In the Southern US they used to call them juke joints, they were a dive bar for African-Americans to hang out, listen to music and drink booze.”

Midnight Rambler will open at Brisbane St, Launceston, on Saturday, October 22. Picture: Supplied

The imminent opening continues Launceston CBD’s dining renaissance, with recent additions including Delicia Acai and Protein Bar, Tenebris, and Caledonian Wine Vaults.

The team behind Tinka Coffee Brewers will open Felix, an espresso cum wine bar, in Milledge Lane in the coming months, while a similar concept is planned by the Cabin Coffee crew for the former Franco’s Italian Restaurant on George St.