Press

City Winery Takes a Chance on Neglected Neighborhoods

Michael Dorf likes a challenge. At 23 years old, he started the popular Knitting Factory concert space in New York—and made the rustic ceiling cool by covering it with sweaters he purchased at Goodwill for $1 each. After selling his stake in 2002 in what had become that multimillion dollar enterprise, he had another dream: to create a bonded winery/concert venue/upscale restaurant in an urban environment that captured the conviviality of evenings usually only experienced in locales like Napa.

City Winery Founder Michael Dorf On The New St Louis Location

During a recent tour of the space in City Foundry STL, the Washington University alum shared details about the location’s design, sustainable wine program, music, and more.

The Roller Rink Popcorn Factory and the Jailhouse Pub

Sal Cataldi

Michael Dorf, the founder of City Winery, plans to convert an abandoned milk factory in Walden, N.Y., into a boutique hotel, winery, restaurant and spa. Its name? The Milk Factory.

Michael Dorf and the Philosophy of Indulgence

Michael Cobb

Today, Dorf has a home off of Minnewaska State Park and has been there for 30 years. His deep love and appreciation of the Hudson Valley inspired him to expand City Winery upstate. Dorf explains, “As we grew, we needed more wine to serve. We were moving our NYC location from Varick Street to the Hudson River location at 11th Avenue and realized we couldn’t build a big enough winery in NYC. We’d been looking in the Hudson Valley for a while. The urban facility was a backdrop to great concerts. I wanted this one to have a focus around great winemaking and a special events space to party around.”

Grand Central Station is Getting a Cool New Wine Bar – Complete with Wine Growlers for Commuters

Ashley Day

City Winery’s three wine and food concepts will be a welcome refuge for the thousands of travelers who pass through the historic New York station everyday.

Jewish music maven Michael Dorf bringing City Winery to Pittsburgh

David Rullo

A conversation with jazz pianist Geri Allen convinced Michael Dorf that Pittsburgh would be a fitting location for his national chain, City Winery.

City Meets Vineyard

Kirsten Cluthe

Two global crises forced City Winery’s Michael Dorf to rethink his business model at critical moments. He found success and sustainability on the other side of both.

Michael Dorf: A Legacy of Rock & Wine

Nick Dauk

Though he does bring his vision for each City Winery venue to life, he’s crafting something beyond the physical structure. A vibe. An essence. To create a sensory experience that immerses visitors in the moment, he focuses his talents on everything from the way the lighting system hits the stage to the type of glassware that he serves wine in.

City Winery Founder Michael Dorf on Making Bold Moves – from Major Cities to the Hudson Valley

Rachael P. Shapiro

City Winery fuses great wine, good food, and intimate concerts by top-notch artists. The concept began in SoHo New York in 2008, the brainchild of nightlife impresario Michael Dorf. Since then, it’s expanded to three locations in Manhattan, plus cities nationwide that include Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Nashville. But when it came to choose their first location outside a major city, Dorf knew it had to be in the Hudson Valley.

City Winery becomes 1st NYC venue to require vaccine proof and negative COVID test

Erica Brosnan

Amid a surge of COVID-19 cases in New York City, driven by the omicron variant, City Winery will become the first venue to require both safety measures. Mask wearing will also be strictly enforced.

How 1995’s Macintosh NY Music Fest ‘Livestreamed’ 25 Years Ahead of Its Time

Andy Gensler

In 1995, long before iPhones, WiFi, social media or Zoom consumed our daily lives, there was just a couple of forward-thinking New York City club owners and promoters looking to replace revenue created by the collapse of the New Music Seminar the year before. Their ingenious idea: a hybrid music festival both in-person and “webcasted,” the livestreaming of its day, at clubs across the city.

City Winery’s Michael Dorf looks back at his ups and downs in the music business

by Philip Booth

We experience much of our lives, at work and at play, in a universe demarcated by any variety of screens, often communicating with one another online rather than in the flesh and ingesting information and entertainment by way of bits and bytes hurtling across the digital universe and arriving courtesy of ear pods and smartphones. Direct downloads into our neural synapses can’t be too far away, right?

It happened to me: The CEO of City Winery tells the story of how supercharged real-estate dealings forced him out of his Tribeca home

by Michael Dorf

Last summer, I was sitting at my desk at City Winery in Tribeca when I learned that the Walt Disney Company had leased our entire block and would be taking a wrecking ball to the 300-seat winery/music club that I’ve run for the last decade.

How This Entrepreneur Reworked His Business Idea in the Face of Financial Armageddon

by Lambeth Hochwald

The financial crisis of 2008 changed everything. Michael Dorf, who founded the 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 refined dining experience. Dorf anticipated bankers buying wines by the barrel.

Après le Déluge: Mushroom Risotto

by Stay at Stove Dad

It has been raining so much these days in NYC that I think we’ll soon have mushrooms growing on the sidewalks and in the subways, and this idea reminded me of a guest post that my friend Michael Dorf, a father of two boys and one girl and the owner of the fantastic club City Winery, sent me last year about his risotto.

Surprising Urban Winery Cultivates Classy Crowd

by Justin Martin

New York City may be the center of finance, fashion, and media – but winemaking? Forget about it. Michael Dorf’s City Winery is trying to fill that void by arranging for fresh-off-the-vine grapes to be express-shipped to Manhattan from the Finger Lakes, California, Oregon, even Chile…

The Music Man

by Jennifer Fiedler

Michael Dorf would like to sell you a concert ticket and a barrel of wine. Michael Dorf has built wine theme-park City Winery in New York City in 2008. He describes the City Winery experience as a high-value, efficient entertainment-dinner with a good wine list and a show. Wine Spectator associate editor Jennifer Fiedler explains.

Dorf Pairs wine with Ed Burns Films

Do movies get better with age, like fine wine? Some probably do. Robert Altman’s “3 Women,” for instance. Maybe Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie & Clyde,” or Harold Ramis’ “Groundhog Day.”

Hello, Lampost

by John Seabrook

Michael Dorf, the impresario behind the City Winery, has in recent years perfected the art of the tribute concert. The formula goes like this: select an artist to honor; recruit a bunch of other musicians to perform songs from the artist’s catalog; and make the event a benefit for a worthy cause…