2 Thesis VINO POPULI: AN URBAN WINERY IN AN ABANDONED STREETCAR STATION Patricia Anne Troendle Interior Design In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the Degree of Master of Art Corcoran College of Art + Design 3 THESIS STATEMENT For fifty years 100,000 square feet of abandoned Streetcar Station has rested dormant beneath Dupont Circle, one of the District of Colombia’s most popular neighborhoods. It’s underground location makes it an ideal space for an urban winery. This proposal creates Vino Populi, Washington DC’s first urban winery and informal wine school with a small restaurant, lounge and tasting room to be located in this abandoned Streetcar Station where anyone who is interested in wine can learn and taste not only wine but the experience of creating wine. 4 ABSTRACT An urban winery holds a unique allure its own paradoxical existence by offering both a novel experience to an urbane audience, but also by permitting its visitors to learn while they eat and drink. The city-dweller, especially in the Washington Metropolitan area, whose citizens are some of the most traveled, educated and highly paid of the whole United States, seeks specialist knowledge, anything that might separate them from the masses by enhancing their own cultural urbanity, anything that will provide a memorable and different experience. Through sheer accessibility an Urban Winery will allow for repetitive access by visitors to the wine facilities, gustatory lessons and thereby demystify wine. The abandoned Streetcar Station beneath Dupont Circle remained largely vacant for nearly fifty years, but the underground space would be ideal for the needs of an urban winery. Visitors could access far more than a typical wine bar allows, they could actually experience the allusive world of wine making. 5 9 X 9 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS: 5 Introduction: A forgotten region, an abandoned tunnel, and a love of wine. 13 America and Wine: An increase in wine drinkers and a market full of individuals. 20 The Rise in Wineries: The value of the grape, artisan wineries and the elixir of life. 25 Marketing Luxury: Connotations, a safe risk, and general confusion. 32 Older than History: From wine skins to the California explosion. 38 The Process: An act of god to chemical equation, from grape to yeast to wine. 43 Visitors and Wineries: An Agreement is made. 49 Virginia’s Plight: A look at a few vineyards and wineries. 54 An Urban Setting: Defense of an atypical but sensible solution. 60 Conclusion, From Tunnel to Winery: Fragility in bottle, and the history of a tunnel. 63 Appendix 70 Notes 73 Bibliography 7 Who does not love wine, wife and song, will be a fool for his whole life long. Strauss A print from Kimmel & Voight, New York 1873. 8 www.tenementmuseum.com INTRODUCTION: A forgotten region, an abandoned tunnel, and a love of wine. In 2008 America passed Italy to become the second largest per capita wine consumer on the planet, second only to France. Experts predict that by 2012 Americans will drink more wine even than the French. The number of small, artisan wineries in the U.S. has doubled in numbers since 20041. Americans love wine. It has become the drink of celebration, passion, love, holidays, reunions and shared secrets. Indeed, fifty years ago wine drinking was reserved only for older, more established, wealthy Americans. Few others could afford it, or elected to purchase it. Today wine sales are up and beer sales are down. Indeed wine has become the national drink of choice for consumers age twenty- five to forty. Wine has become so pervasive an addition to modern American life that wine bars have been opening throughout the country, offering visitors a refined 9 dining and drinking experience. Wine is offered, and often encouraged at an increasing number of venues like airports, ballparks, museums and circuses as an alternative to the more traditionally American beer. It, “competes with other drinks on the strength of its taste and quality, as well as on its reputation as the most civilized of beverages, and it appears to be holding its own against the competition.2” Wine is the most popular alcoholic beverage for young American consumers, due to this emerging market. More Americans drink wine than ever before and those who drink wine are drinking more wine, more often than ever before3. Washington, DC has more than twenty self-proclaimed wine bars4. These bars connote elegance, wealth, culture and class. The large international population, the higher-than-average education and salary rates of Washingtonians augment Washington, DC’s population of wine bar visitors. Visitors feel as though they do more than drink and socialize at a wine bar, they are expanding their social mores, refining their palette, broadening their experiential memories. The visitors to these wine bars are after something a bit different than beer and companionship. They expect luxury, quality and an elite style. This new market is comprised of highly educated and cultured 10 consumers. Studies have shown that wine-drinkers, on average, are more educated and wealthier than the rest of the population, they are savvy consumers and trendsetters to the marketplace5. They see themselves as living the good life, they have travelled or dream of travelling. They are eager to spend money in order to enhance their own vision of themselves. The children of the children of the baby-boomer generation, these wine-bar visitors are accustomed to wealth and privilege and they want something more for their money than the large steaks their parents preferred. They want something imported, something that has a story behind it, they want to understand the origins of the products they purchase6. They want to feel as if they have built profound, unique experiences that convert themselves into profound and unique individuals, rather than the large, united market that they have actually become. They are willing to pay for what market analysts refer to as intangibles, novel experiences, emotions and status. Wine embodies all these needs. The novel experience is the tasting of a new varietal, or a fine vintage, the emotions swirling inside the liquid, the feel of it on the tongue. This generation enjoys spending money on wine, whether as a means to impress their peers, because their parents did so when dining out, or because they revel in their ability to spend money on something as luxurious and indulgent as wine and the esoteric art of wine tasting. Wine tasting is: 11 a branch of enology and is more correctly called sensory evaluation: the use of the senses of sight, smell, taste and touch in a disciplined, systematic way to learn about some of the chemical and physical properties of wine. Those chemical and physical attributes of food and wine that affect our senses are called organoleptic characteristics, and sensory evaluation is sometimes called organoleptic evaluation.7 The very verbiage that is used by wine connoisseurs and educators serves as a road block to a large portion of the population especially in older generations, denying them the confidence to enter the world. But to the new generation of wine drinkers these obscure words are like a dangled carrots, tantalizing them with the promise and potential for elite knowledge. It’s a strange balance that wine has developed for itself, encouraged by film, books and critics, on the one hand it rejects many people through intimidation, on the other it lures more in through its seemingly exclusive ranks. Despite its popularity, wine resides in a unique sphere in modern culture. Although most Americans drink it, few possess confidence or genuine knowledge about the subject. Perhaps this is due to the relative impossibility to prove right or wrong in references to one’s taste buds. Perhaps it is because movies and films often depict individuals who mock wine faux pas, or perhaps individuals fear appearing pretentious. Regardless of the reasons, many consumers lack a general confidence in their abilities to choose wines for dinner, to recognize different regions or varietals, and even their ability to taste the wine itself8. This market craves elitist 12 knowledge, anything that sets them apart from their peers. Wine bars offer a chance for them to seek out this knowledge. Just miles outside of the city Northern Virginia vineyards and wineries are growing and producing internationally competitive Viogniers and Chardonnays. Yet the region is suffers from difficult growing pains. Although they have won international taste tests against French Viogniers (Viognier is a French grape varietal that is named for the region where it is grown, Viognier, France) there is a general lack of disseminated information and lack of support in the marketplace. Food and Wine, Wine Spectator, Wine Business and other wine periodicals have taken note in recent years of some very fine Virginia wines, but the Northern Virginia region sits in the massive shadow cast first by California, then by Oregon, Washington and more recently by New York. Virginia wine growers consider themselves to be about fifteen to twenty years behind Oregon. The reality is that although they produce a few good types of wine, buyers tend to buy what they are comfortable with and a Virginia Viognier sounds too risky for many consumers. So Virginia wineries grow the varietals of grapes to make wines that people buy like Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, and they do not make these as well as their competitors. The wines they do make well like Viognier and Petit Verdot sound too unfamiliar. Many local consumers associate Virginia wines with the less expensive, lower quality wines that are offered at liquor stores in the area and thus consumers have had bad experience 13 with Virginia wines.