The landmark approval of a hybrid liquor licence has allowed Sydney hospitality group Odd Culture to open Spon, a bar within a bottle shop where customers can drink wine by the glass at a fraction of the usual price.

Spon (as in, spontaneous fermentation) opens on King Street, Newtown on Friday, with $6 glasses of chilled red, orange and petillant naturel (naturally sparkling) wine available throughout the remainder of August and September.

Beyond the opening special, the lower overheads associated with a 20-seat drink-in bottle shop allow for every one of Spon’s 17,000 bottles of wines, beers and ciders to be poured by the glass for a fraction of the takeaway price, making them significantly cheaper than at a comparative bar or restaurant.

“We’re really trying to make it as affordable as possible,” Odd Culture chief executive officer James Thorpe says.

It’s a concept inspired by the charming, drink-in bottle shops hidden in Melbourne laneways and on the cobblestone streets of Paris.

But in a rarely seen move, Spon has taken a hands-off approach to the curation of its daily wine list. Aside from one red and one white selected by an in-house sommelier, customers will have free rein to choose a bottle from the retail section, then give it to the bartender to open as one of the by-the-glass options.

“It’s a terrifying and awesome proposition,” Thorpe says.

“There will be a set number of slots, and we’ll offer broad curation to avoid there being 12 chardonnays on the list at the same time, but aside from that it’s basically a free-for-all.”

Group beverage manager Jordan Blackman says customers will be able to pour wines that rarely make it into restaurants, like those by esteemed Jura winemaker Jean-Francois Ganevat.

“We’ve been sitting on a lot of rare allocation wines, waiting for the right time to open them, and this model lends itself to that,” he says.

“But we do want to keep it approachable, with plenty of fresh, fun and drinkable options under $20.”

A tight menu of snacks will be available, including beer bread with Odd Cultured butter ($7), charcuterie using LP’s Quality Meats ($24) and Spanish yellowfin tuna and capers served with the same hand-cut potato crisps available at the Odd Culture restaurant ($22).

Thorpe says there are plans to add secret menu items, but he’s not willing to spill the beans just yet.

It has taken Thorpe more than two years of working with Liquor & Gaming NSW to obtain the two licences required (the small bar and packaged liquor licences) to convert the Odd Culture bottle shop into Spon. Previously, the only venues allowed to operate both a bottle shop and a bar in Sydney were pubs.

Thorpe says this bureaucratic hurdle prevented small-scale, drink-in bottle shops from opening in Sydney.

Odd Culture recently opened its first outlet in Melbourne’s Fitzroy, combining bottle shop and bar.

“It’s a landmark decision,” he says of the approval, handed down late last year.

“You’ll start to see this concept pop up across the city now, and we pioneered that.”

Open Mon-Thu noon-10pm, Fri noon-midnight, Sat 11am-midnight

256 King Street, Newtown, spon.bar