At 5 p.m. on Friday, I'm picking stray leaves and stems from petite sirah grapes strewn on a sorting table, not in Napa or Bordeaux but in downtown Manhattan at brand-new City Winery.
Next to me, Dr. Mark Pruzanski, president of biotech firm Intercept Pharmaceuticals, plucks out an unripe grape with a sticky hand. He's living his pet fantasy of making his own wine.
Pruzanski signed up weeks ago to make a private-label barrel of cabernet, which will yield roughly 270 bottles. Cost: a $5,000 basic membership fee, plus $3,280 for grapes and $425 to $1,100 for aging, depending on which kind of oak barrel he chooses.
Yet in this financial climate, how many other people will pay $8,000 to $10,000 to make a barrel of wine? It's not as though people will be producing bargains -- the cost works out to about $30 to $35 per bottle.
``This is a nice distraction from what's going on in the financial markets,'' admits the 40-year-old West Village resident. ``It feels like a mini-vacation, steps from my Tribeca office.'' He's helping me sort while waiting for his cabernet grapes from Napa's Betinelli Vineyards to arrive later this evening.
There are now dozens of places in the U.S. where you can make your own wine. The well-known leader is four-year-old Crushpad in San Francisco, though several other California wineries and more than 20 small New Jersey enterprises also offer do-it-yourself options.
City Winery founder and Chief Executive Michael Dorf, who created and ran the Knitting Factory, a New York indie music venue, has a surround-sound vision of his very urban winery. He plans a sophisticated, one-stop wine experience, complete with food and music.
Not Just a Winery
As winemaker David Lecomte maneuvers a forklift truck carrying another load of grapes around shiny fermentation tanks, Dorf tells me that by December, the rest of the winery's 21,000 square feet of space will include a restaurant and wine bar with 500 wines (50-plus by the glass), a cheese bar, winemaking classes, private parties and concerts on the huge stage.
``Imagine the pleasure of eating around your barrel, listening to music around your barrel, bringing your friends to try your barrel samples,'' he says.
Dorf, dressed in old jeans, wine-stained running shoes and shapeless tan sweater, chews gum as he fills me in on his wine epiphany.
``On a trip to Napa, I kept thinking how great it would be to have a music concert inside a winery,'' he says, ``And then my brother and I got a couple of custom barrels of wine made at Ridge Vineyards. My friends who tried our Shed Red said, `I'd like to make a wine like that.' I thought to myself, is it possible to do it in Manhattan?''
Music Connections
His music connections helped line up quality grapes. Napa winery owner Spencer Roloson, who had met his wife at the Knitting Factory, sold him some and provided entree to prime growers.
City Winery offers a range of grapes from top vineyards in California, Oregon and New York's Long Island and Finger Lakes region, plus state-of-the-art equipment, an experienced staff winemaker and the chance to be as involved as much (or as little) as you wish. Pruzanski will help move his fermented juice to barrel next month, blend the wine in early 2009 and bottle it a year later. (Grapes from Chile and Argentina arrive next spring.)
Newbies won't go wrong. French-born winemaker Lecomte, who's done stints at California's Herzog Wine Cellars as well as Rhone Valley producer M. Chapoutier, is in charge throughout the process. He's also making 100 barrels for the winery itself.
New Revenue Streams
Will City Winery be a hit? The idea that music events and high-end private parties could generate additional revenue convinced Matthew Sperling, managing director of equity capital markets at Jefferies & Co., to become one of the winery's first investors. It was a decision he says he came to ``over many bottles of wine.'' And, of course, he's making his own barrel.
Dorf admits that ``the credit crunch is affecting my nerves.'' One investor has pulled out, and the $15,000 premier barrel category hasn't had any traction in the past three weeks. Still, a third of the barrels have been sold to a diverse group of New Yorkers, from group president of JP Morgan Mutual Funds George Gatch to supermodel Petra and artist Chuck Close.
Dorf is taking no chances. This week he's launching a ``community barrel'' category (about $1,500) for those willing to share with five like-minded strangers. (Think of it as the latest singles opportunity.)
He's also revamping next year's music plans.
``My idea of having Sting appear at a $1,000-ticket concert would have worked six months ago, but the game has changed in the past five or six days,'' he says. Thursday night ``pairing'' events start in January, with Grammy Award-winning Steve Earle and his wife, Allison Moorer, followed by singer-songwriters Suzanne Vega and Marc Cohn.
Dorf remains optimistic.
``Look, in good times and bad times, people like to drink,'' he says, and he's right about that.
