HOWTIME! City Winery Napa at the Historic Napa Valley Opera House opened its doors in early April with a sold-out show for Bruce Cockburn and has completed its lineup of exciting performances through June. The much-anticipated opening came after a four-month renovation to bring a new experience to the Napa Valley by Knitting Factory founder Michael Dorf. City Winery Napa is the third urban winery venue for Dorf that combines fine wine, incredible food, and world-class live music in a sitdown, intimate setting. City Winery New York opened in 2008 and quickly established itself as one of the “best places to see live music in New York” according to the New York Times, as well as a unique, functioning urban winery making high quality wine. Success in New York led to opening a second location in Chicago in 2012. The Napa location is the first west coast location, with Nashville scheduled to open in late 2014. According to Dorf, City Winery Napa is a win-win for the city and will help revamp the struggling Napa Valley Opera House, a non-profit performing arts organization. It was originally constructed in 1879. NVOH restored its intimate second-floor, 500-seat Margrit Biever Mondavi Theatre in 2002, but the current layout was too restrictive and limiting for many 24 www.nAPAVA L L E Y L I F Emagaz ine. c om City Winery, at the Historic Napa Valley Opera House, changes up the downtown Napa mix types of performances, according to Dorf. Dorf was originally looking at the defunct Copia location for his next City Winery location and wanted to create a relationship for the NVOH to help cross-promote and market each other. He met with Executive Director Peter Williams and they saw synergy to help each other. “It was an interesting overlap,” said Dorf. “Peter told me the Opera House was struggling and having trouble raising money and asked me to look at the Opera House to do my business here. I walked into the downstairs space and said it looked ugly and disconnected. Then I walked upstairs and it looked spectacular, but the seats were fixed. I found a picture of the upstairs as a flat ballroom before the remodel, and I got inspired. Then I was invited to the Opera House Gala held at Charles Krug Winery, and asked why not do the fundraiser at the Opera House? I was told there was not enough space, so I studied it. I thought, well, there could be if you took out all the fixed seats. The design unfortunately affected the overall model for the Opera House.” Dorf knew there would be concern from Opera House supporters. “Peter asked me if I would be interested in figuring out solutions. We needed to rethink and go back to the original youth of the opera house; finishing S Michael Dorf photo by ART & CLARITY by KARI RUEL
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