City Winery Opens Its Doors

He's promoted music greats, and now he’s promoting some fancy grapes. Michael Dorf, founder of The Knitting Factory and the Oyhoo Festival, will see his vision come to fruition when City Winery opens its doors in downtown Manhattan. The first of its kind in New York City, City Winery members will be able to make their own wine, from selecting their own grapes to even creating their own name for the wine.

Aside from the exclusive membership, which had reached more than half of its limit at 100 people, City Winery will offer classes to the public and have a wine bar and a private event space, equipped with a state-of-the-art sound system.

“I could see the space being used for a party for (president-elect) Barack Obama or a performance by Prince,” Dorf said. But the focus here will be on the wine.”

The wine bar, which opens in December, will offer dozens of kosher wines, while classes at the space at 143 Varick Street begin later this month. Dorf said that the quality of kosher wines has improved within the last decade.

“There have been great strides made in the area of kosher wine, especially coming out of Israel, Dorf said. “ People are taking notice.”

Patrons might sip Shiraz or rent out a private event space for a bat-mitzvah party, but the sexiest element of the creation is the winemaking membership, says Dorf. To make your own wine, the basic fee of $5,000 can go up to as much as $12,000 or more, depending on the type of grapes, storage, fermentation process, the type of barrel selected and other options. A barrel yields about 275 bottles of wine and members can name their wine and make up their own label. While skyscrapers hardly seem like a breeding ground for finding and harvesting grapes, Dorf realized he could source grapes from around the country that were refrigerated and shipped to Manhattan. Then, the grapes would be de-stemmed, fermented and stored on site.

“I had seen the wineries out in California and became really interested in the nuances of flavors and the intimacy of winemaking,” Dorf said. “I said to myself ‘why not bring it to here?’”

“It’s one thing to simply drink a glass of wine, but it’s quite another to be able to follow it from the time the grapes are selected, received, stored, fermented and finally after a bout a year or more, consumed,” he said. “It’s that intimate experience that we were going for.”

The winemaking and barrel ownership offers some a chance to do something they would be unlikely, if not impossible.

“I’ve always dreamed of making wine eventually, but I thought I’d have to get really rich and buy a vineyard somewhere,” barrel owner Mark Pruzansky told ABC News.

The grapes will come from Oregon, upstate New York, Argentina and of course, California, while attempts will be make to ship grapes from other locations if so desired, Dorf said.

According to Thomas Matthews, executive editor of Wine Spectator, City Winery may make grapes a hot topic in the Big Apple.

“This is certainly an innovation for New York,” wrote Matthews in an e-mail to The Blueprint. “While winemaking has been practiced in the city for generations, both as a hobby and a business, City Winery will be the first relatively large-scale professional service to offer grape sourcing, winemaking assistance and barrel aging in Manhattan. Bridge Urban Winery and the Red Hook winery are also making wine in New York, but neither offer the opportunity for consumers to create their own wine, and neither are currently offering kosher wine.”

City Winery’s winemaking section has already opened, while classes start later this month, beginning with instruction on how wine is influenced by climate.

If things heat up at City Winery due great musical acts, people won’t have to look far for a drink to cool themselves off.

Dorf said City Winery was built to be versatile and allow people to enjoy the culture of the city while combining wine, food and music, though there will not be music every night as some clubs have.

Asked to name the price-tag for the ambitious project, Dorf would only give a ballpark figure.

“Let’s just say it was a lot of shekels,” he said.