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CULTURE
BUSINESS
UNUSUAL | DESIGN | TRAVEL
Red, white
and rock
City Winery offers a mature take
on the music-club experience
he financial crisis of 2008
changed everything. Michael Dorf,
T who founded legendary New York
City rock venue the Knitting Factory in
1986, was just three months away from
opening a combined winery and music
club in Manhattan that would feature
visible steel fermenting tanks and a
refined dining experience. Dorf anticipated
bankers buying wines by the barrel.
But the subprime mortgage crisis
doused those expectations. “We were
not only in financial Armageddon,
but there was such a reversal in big
spending and ostentatious behavior,”
Dorf says. “It became taboo.”
He had to find an alternative concept.
“I came to an internal phrase, something
I call being ‘vessel-agnostic,’ which meant
that I realized that it didn’t matter if I
sold wine by the barrel or by the glass.”
He kept the steel tanks but shifted
his business plan from barrel sales to
a by-the-glass tap wine service.
“When I conceptualized City Winery,”
Dorf recalls, “I was getting older, I
had young kids, and going out was rare.
I wanted to build a place where I could
eat a lot, drink a lot and consume a
lot of culture.”
The City Winery in New York was
followed by locations in Chicago,
Nashville and Napa, Calif. The company
now has a total of 500 employees and
plans to open establishments in Atlanta,
Boston and Toronto by the end of 2016.
“We are focusing on larger urban
environments that have sophisticated
cultural and culinary audiences,” says
Dorf, who serves as CEO. “We’ll open
in cities that are experiencing robust
and strong hospitality markets.”
PHOTOS © CHAD BATKA
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