A Man Who Knows His Wine

A while back we interviewed a guy named David Hitchner for a piece we were writing on local NYC food businesses, and we thought we'd throw it up on here for the readers of "The Biz."

David owns a very cool wine shop and an awesome restaurant in the East Village. If you're a fellow New Yorker, you should really go frequent his establishments. "The Biz" approves.

Enjoy;

David Hitchner is a new breed of “wine geek,” the kind that might very well shape the tastes of wine drinkers in post-recession America.

“The options market on Bordeaux should be interesting this year,” he tells me in a calmly casual tone that fails to conceal his vibrant knowledge and impressive recall of wine-related minutiae, “2005 was the last [Bordeaux] vintage and all the reviews were great but since then a lot of vendors have liquidated their top-shelf stuff, like Brunellos.”

And, unlike the stereotype of the older, elitist, sommelier, he says this all without a hint of pedagogy in his voice.

The twenty-seven year old businessman can often be found offering his thoughts on viniculture from behind the bar of his intimate East Village wine bar “In Vino,” or, a few blocks farther east at his wine shop, “Alphabet City Wine Co,” where he can recline his lanky frame on one of the worn leather chairs that, along with a vintage looking turntable, constitute a lived-in, ad hoc living room in the center of the sales floor.

A Maryland native and graduate of McGill University in Montreal, Hitchner settled into the East Village during the autumn of 2007, where he started working at “In Vino” under its previous owner, putting his wine knowledge to use from the behind the bar.

Meanwhile he and some friends began to formulate the plan for their own mercantile wine business, one that fit their evolving view of how wine should be sold.

“I got into this because I love wine and the wine industry,” Hitchner says, “But my business partner and I found all the wine shops we went to were too big, too anonymous, too elitist. We wanted create a down to earth, affordable store for a younger, less prejudiced audience that was interested in drinking newer stuff and being educated by people who really love wine.”

They found an available commercial space, hired a lawyer that specialized in liquor board cases and began to apply for an off-premises liquor license, a notoriously difficult process within the borders of New York City.

In the end, the partners presented a forty-plus page application document that introduced their mission statement of “providing affordable wines from independent producers,” and also included Census records, building department blueprints, prospective investment reports and news clips.

“Our lawyer said it was the most detailed report he’d ever seen,” says Hitchner with obvious pride, “and he was a very good lawyer.”

As the liquor license process moved forward, Hitchner and his partner struck a deal with the owner of “In Vino” to buy the restaurant which they took over at the end of 2007.

Suddenly, the partners found themselves to be the proprietors of two businesses with a massive financial crisis looming invisibly on the horizon.

“The businesses kind of ‘grew up’ during the recession,” says Hitchner in hindsight, “and because we were new, we just seemed to grow despite the downturn.”

And he believes that their incongruous success can be attributed to the store’s original mission statement.

“We were educating people that good wine can be affordable wine, so people from the neighborhood came to trust us, and they kept coming back.”

This unique opportunity to educate and grow a consumer base should bode well for “The Alphabet Wine Co.” and its ability to continue growing, especially in a changing climate within the wine industry.

“This liquidation of more high-priced wines has shown just how on the margins distributors were,” Hitchner postulates, “there’s been a correction.”

That correction will be a once in a generation opportunity for younger, local wine merchants like Hitchner to capitalize on the moment and begin to be the primary of influencers of wine drinkers for years to come.

“After all Bordeaux isn’t run by vintners,” Hitchner says, returning to his ruminations on Bordeaux, “it’s a “marketing machine” run by the wine sellers.”

Hitchner is not being critical of himself with his observation, he’s blaming the “wine sellers,” not the “wine geeks.”

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He's a good man.
Thanks again for your time David.