Aaron Turner is best known for his Geelong restaurants Igni and The Hot Chicken Project. His passion for good food and wine is no secret, but boredom during Victoria’s lockdowns has led the celebrated chef to focus on a third love: music. Sitting at home drinking wine and spinning records, Turner had an idea.
“I’ve got quite a big record collection and wine collection and I’m always putting the two together,” Turner says. “In one of the lockdowns I was like, ‘I should do this as a little side hustle.’ So I threw it together, pairing a record with a wine just for a mood.”
His concept is called Spinnin’ Juice, an online shop that sells record-and-wine bundles, delivered to you.
Vinyl records rotate regularly and are whatever takes Turner’s fancy at the time – there’s everything from Americana to black metal – but wines are mostly natural-leaning picks from The Hot Chicken Project.
“I did a [country singer-songwriter] called Joshua Hedley with Express Winemakers,” Turner says. “Their red wine is just a really nice quaffing wine, and his record is such a nice, easy listen. An old-school Australian thrash band, Massappeal – I did that with a wine called Flat Out by Borachio. They’re both wild, y’know? So that was fun.”
At the moment Spinnin’ Juice is run through an Instagram page with a Shopify link to buy the bundles. Pricing varies depending on what’s going, but expect to pay less than $100 for the most part. Delivery in Geelong is free and it’s a flat $15 rate to the rest of the country.
Though it’s definitely a side hustle, Turner is hopeful orders will keep expanding.
“Hopefully it takes off,” he says, “and I can sell everything else and just sit around listening to music and drinking wine.”
