Revel OTR

Revel OTR is an urban micro-winery peddling wine as an everyman drink, ill-served by the pretension that has built up around it. Instead of relying wholly on aspirational consumption, the founders draw from their experiences using inherited techniques to make wine with family and friends. This casual approach informed the renovation of an historic, though dilapidated, 1885 building into a comfortable space for making and drinking wine.

The first floor bar salutes the street with two custom windows that pivot open. Once out of the way, the storefront becomes a banquette for lounging, while upstairs, a cozy event space thrives with cultural programming and celebrations that often make their way into the street. The basement production area, visible from the street, is used in crafting the establishment’s own Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon wines, grounding it in the authenticity of craft traditions.

The creation of an engaging environment was an extension of the desire to revise the aloof relationship between product and clientele. Wine would be served in juice glasses and priced affordably. Finishes would be unabashedly tactile, and preserved to the extent possible. Building materials would be artfully dismantled, if necessary, and reused as stair treads, die wall, or custom furniture. All distance was collapsed to ensure that the aura of the final product came not from the pretense of inaccessibility, but from its function as an enduring point of contact with the ephemeral.