Jamsheed’s elegant wines are on regular rotation at Embla, Marion, Sunda, Tipo 00 and many of Broadsheet’s other favourite restaurants. Which made last year’s announcement of a new Preston-based urban winery especially exciting. Drinking Jamsheed wines in the same building they were made in is something that’s never been possible in the label’s 16-year history.

“It’s not going to be a frou-frou cellar door. It’s going be a dive bar,” owner, winemaker and all-round good guy Gary Mills said at the time. “I’m going to have a pool table, a PlayStation, some comfy couches … it’s going to be a place where you can come and just have a really good social interaction.”

It was due to open in January and is close to finished, but Mills, who’s been doing most of the carpentry work himself, has come up short on cash. “It’s quite incredible how much things cost these days,” he says. “No matter how much I budgeted for, it just blew out.”

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To get the winery over the line, Mills has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise the $55,000 required to finish the build. $10,000 is needed for furniture, $20,000 to build a bar and $25,000 to pour an equal-access concrete ramp.

“I’ve got 80 per cent done, including all the boring bits,” Mills says. “I’ve got all the permits and equipment and the air conditioning. The money I’m trying to raise with Pozible is to make the space accessible to everybody, be they disabled or able-bodied. That means having a nice fit-out, nice lighting, chairs, tables, disabled access and good toilets.”

The eight pledge levels range from the $48 “Night In” (a bottle of wine at the bar, plus two Jamsheed glasses to take home) to “The Big One” – 20 cases of sparkling pét-nat personalised with your name on the label, and a launch party for you and 30 mates. There’s also an attractive, sensible middle ground: a half–case of six mixed Jamsheed wines for $220.

Jamsheed wines focus on single-vineyard Victorian shiraz and aromatic whites such as riesling. Mills doesn’t buy into the “natural” and “minimal-intervention” labels so in vogue right now, but he doesn’t use enzymes, acids or other chemicals in the winery.

If the $55,000 goal is reached, Mills thinks he’ll be able to open the bar by early October.

Contribute to Jamsheed’s Pozible campaign here.