10 years in: Nick Corletto on Maybe Mae’s longevity and upcoming tour

Those of you who get to Adelaide know this to be true: Maybe Mae is one of Australia’s best bars.

Maybe Mae opened in 2014 in what was just becoming the Peel and Leigh Street precinct of bars and restaurants — it was among the first small bars too open in Adelaide following the introduction of small bar licensing in 2013.

Ollie Margan — who now makes the wine for his family’s Hunter Valley vineyards — was the opening bar manager, and number of top flight bartenders have put in time behind the stick at Maybe Mae (including Darren Leaney, creator of the Tiramisu Milk Punch). Nick Corletto joined the team about a year into its run, and took over day to day operations as Ollie moved onto other projects.

The focus on fresh, in-season ingredients and South Australian produce has been there since 2014, but four years in they closed the doors briefly to renovate, and reset the bar so that it was better suited to table service. And it was around this time that they refocused their creative lens more precisely onto the bounty of South Australian produce and other ingredients that surrounded them. This idea — that you use the produce from the local area to make your drinks — was still a relatively new notion: Sydney bar Bulletin Place had opened in 2012 and over time grew to champion this idea (before its closure in 2021); Paddington’s Charlie Parker’s only got its stem to leaf approach to drinks going in 2016; and another notable advocate for getting to know one’s producers, Luke Whearty’s Melbourne bar Byrdi, wouldn’t open until 2019.

Maybe Mae has been at it this whole time, and as a result, you’ll find some very good drinks here.

Adelaide has changed over the course of that 10 year period — Peel and Leigh streets are now packed with small bars and restaurants, and other laneways around the city have become to new, smart small bars from indie operators.

If you ask me, though, Maybe Mae is still home to the best drinks in town.

10 years is a big run for any bar, let alone a small cocktail bar in a small city whose inhabitants are already blessed with great suburban pubs and cracking wine. In this week’s Drinks At Work, I talk to Nick about what the keys to Maybe Mae’s longevity have been, why the real story of the produce and the people who make it is more important than any philosophy or dogma about using local ingredients, and what keeps him in the job after nine years working at Maybe Mae — who ever gets to nine years at one employer these days?

I’ve said many times over the years that Maybe Mae would be a great bar wherever in the world you put it, but what makes it distinctive is that focus on the bounty of good produce and spirits that come out of South Australia.

If you haven’t been there yet, I’d suggest you make plans.

This episode is presented by Never Never Distilling Co., who is supporting Maybe Mae’s upcoming Hidden Spaces tour in Melbourne and Brisbane — you can catch Nick and the team at the dates below on their first ever takeover tour.

Hidden Spaces Melbourne
Where: The Attic, 304 Brunswick St, Fitzroy VIC 3065 (entrance off back lane)
Date: Sunday, August 18th
Time: 6pm – 12am
Tickets: Jump the Queue

Hidden Spaces Brisbane
Where: Savile Row, 667 Ann St, Fortitude Valley QLD 4006
Date: Tuesday, August 20th
Time: 6pm – 2am

The Quotable Nick Corletto

“Trying to showcase what makes South Australia great and what makes South Australia unique.”

It’s remarkable how the bar’s core mission has essentially stayed the same across these 10 years, and how the bar continues to remain relevant and fresh. I’ve written a lot about what makes good bars great, and a recurring theme is this: great bars have distinctive, strong identities — you know what you’re going to get. Maybe Mae — with its South Australian produce focus, and technique driven drinks focused on flavour and approachability — seems to have nailed that brief.

“Nine years.”

Who works in one place for nine years these days? There’s something to be said for working somewhere for a sustained period of time; bartenders jump about so often these days, and I don’t blame them — it’s great to get experience in a range of roles. But there’s a deeper understanding that can come from really getting to know a place down to its bones, to seeing trends come and go, and the shift in different eras over time. I think that deep involvement can set you up to open a place of your own one day, too.

“The philosophy was less important than the story we were telling.”

It’s more important to know the story of the people doing the growing than it is to have a local ingredients only policy in place. At Maybe Mae, they’ve got a lot of Australian spirits, but not exclusively so. They’ll stock good stuff from across the seas. And they’re not a sustainable bar per se, even if they adopt a many of the sustainable practices that have become available over the last decade. Instead they’re focused on the guest experience, and telling stories that move people and make that drink taste that little bit better.

“We know that Mark grows all of our apples in the Adelaide Hills — that’s the more important thing,” Nick says, “we know that the relationship and the emotional attachment is far more important than just sticking to the bit.”

“‘One and done’ is probably not the secret to a successful business plan.”

This is just good drinkmaking advice. With any new cocktail recipe, I wish more bartenders would ask themselves — honestly — if they would have another round. Would they pay the money to drink another one? As someone who has judged a lot of cocktail competitions, there are plenty of cocktails that are interesting to taste; far fewer are the drinks I’d want to order (and pay for) a second time around.