An unlikely new business has taken over what used to be a bar and art venue in the heart of Williamsburg: an urban winery. Brooklyn Winery, an 8,000-square-foot space on a residential block surrounded by row houses and new condos, will feature a wine bar and a venue to host events. But the winemaking is the real draw.
In its first season, the winery expects to churn out 100 barrels of wine with grapes coming mostly from Sonoma, Calif., and also from vineyards in the North Fork of Long Island and the Finger Lakes of Upstate New York. Aspiring winemakers will also be able to try their hand at winemaking as well. Customers will take part in the entire eight- to 24-month-long process starting with crushing and fermenting the grapes all the way to hand bottling the wine. Winemakers can customize the blend of their wine and design their own labels.
"It's an addicting process," said the 27-year-old proprietor, Brian Leventhal. Mr. Leventhal doesn't come from a wine background or even have bar or restaurant experience. He most recently worked for tech start-up in Manhattan. Before that he was a business consultant in New Jersey.While working at the tech start-up, Mr. Leventhal met his business partner, John Stires. They began making trips out to New Jersey to a winemaking facility where they were introduced to the winemaking process.
After making three batches of their own wine (the process takes around one year) Messrs. Stires and Leventhal decided to bring the winemaking experience to Brooklyn. By February 2010, they quit their jobs and began finalizing their plans to get a space of their own.
Brooklyn Winery is among several urban wineries that have opened up around the country in recent years, including City Winery on Manhattan's West Side, which also offers the chance to make wine. Brooklyn Winery hopes to stand out by offering relatively cheaper winemaking packages.
(On the low end, customers pay $600 to make two cases of wine, which works out to $25 a bottle. A full barrel, or about 300 bottles, costs $5,700.)
Final touches are being put on the wine bar and event space, which are expected to open in about one week. Wine will be on tap and bottles of wine will be available to go.Instead of the customary intimate spaces found in most wine bars, the Brooklyn Winery has set up large communal tables to encourage conversation among patrons. "The point of the wine bar," Mr. Leventhal said, "is to make wine really approachable to people."
For example, the winery will be making two different Chardonnays, one aged in oak barrels and another aged in stainless-steel barrels. Patrons will be able to taste both to compare the crisp, acidic flavor of the Chardonnay aged in stainless-steel to the buttery, well-bodied taste of the Chardonnay aged in oak. Winery employees can then explain why the wines taste different even though the same type of grape is used.
"I just don't think that's happening right now, at least from my experience from places that serve wine," Mr. Leventhal said.
Brooklyn Winery tapped Conor McCormack to oversee wine production. Mr. McCormack had been in charge of production at the urban winery Crushpad in San Francisco for the previous two years. He was hesitant at first about moving to New York to work at Brooklyn Winery. "Winemaking and Brooklyn-they don't generally match up," said Mr. McCormack who had made wine in California since 2003.
For the past several weeks Mr. McCormack has overseen would-be winemakers making their first batches of Merlots, Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs in the Brooklyn Winery's 3,500-square-foot production rooms
"I think there is so much that goes into a bottle of wine and there is so much mystery behind it," Mr. Leventhal said. "I find it fascinating being able to make decisions which will impact the final product, especially for something as age old as wine."
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