City Winery Boston

City Winery Boston sits on the edge of the modern West End, nestled among the sites along the Freedom Trail and landmarks like Bunker Hill, near art-filled and important institutions like the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art and the Museum of African American History, and across the Charles River from historic areas like Charlestown and Cambridge.

City Winery is the brainchild of Michael Dorf, founder of the iconic Knitting Factory, one of New York’s longest running music venues, who wanted to create a space in Manhattan where he could combine his shared passions for wine and music. After making his first barrel of wine in California with his brother Josh and winemaker David Tate, formerly of Ridge Winery and now at Barnett Vineyards, Michael caught the bug: “For a long time I’d been enjoying wine as a fan – drinking it, taking classes, attending wine dinners – but it was not until I actually started participating in the process of working with the grape, turning it into wine, putting it into a bottle, and watching it develop over time, that I really started to understand wine. And when I would give my friends a bottle of wine with my name on it, most would respond by saying: ‘I wanna do that too!’ It was this experience that led Michael to conceptualize and start working on the City Winery business plan in 2006.