Just a couple of months ago, Dokeo was tucked away in the depths of the CBD, located out of an old motorcycle workshop.
Now, it has been revitalised into something special. The café come wine bar has more than doubled in size, moving to Pultney Street.
Dokeo, meaning to contemplate, was created to showcase small producers but to also ask its customers to be mindful of where their purchase comes from.
“We want to be mindful of our supply chains for food, coffee and wine,” explains Dokeo co-owner, Vasily Sekerin.
“My gripe with most wine menus is that they only have a token small producer. We’re only stocking very small producers from South Australia, and a couple from Western Australia and Victoria. It’s important to us to champion them, and give them a platform.”
A winemaker by trade, Vas has a background in coffee which is how he met co-owner and now business partner, Daniel Gregg – an economist who spends his days educating coffee farmers in Uganda on ethically produced and traded coffee.
Through his business, Intersection Traders, Dan frequently travels to the African nation, building relationships with farmers and helping to provide them with better conditions as well as connecting producers to their harvests.
It’s Vas and Dan’s passion for supporting small producers that spurred them to open Dokeo.
“We thought it would be a good idea to put together a venue to showcase the coffee and wine and focus on small producers from SA and around the country,” says Vas.
Having opened as a café at the end of last year, Dokeo has also become a nighttime haunt, now operating as wine bar from Thursday to Saturday.
Working in the wine industry, Vas knows all too well the challenges that face those who are on the outside. “It wasn’t easy to get into wine and a lot of people sort of struggle to approach wine,” he says. “People are scared to ask questions and it can be quite an intimidating industry but at the end of the day it’s just a fermented grape drink, so our aim is to make it more accessible.”
“The whole idea of both the café and the wine bar is to create a relaxed environment where the pretension and barriers of wine are stripped away by the non-conventional pathways to wine.”
The bar has also teamed up with Ramon Tampos to offer an intimate, filipino-inspired menu. There’s 6 to 8 dishes on offer, so that the menu can be changed quickly and in its entirety.
“You can come in hungry and eat the whole menu!” Vas laughs.
You can find Dokeo at 258 Pulteney St, Adelaide. For more information, check out the Instagram.
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