Brunello Wine Bar, the intimate downtown Durham spot where curious palates discovered wines beyond the mainstream, serves its final pour today.
Owner Esteban Brunello tells the INDY the closure stems from shifting wine consumption patterns combined with demographic changes in downtown Durham.
Recent industry data show the U.S. wine market declining in volume while younger consumers increasingly go for other beverages. Brunello says these trends are playing out in downtown Durham, where he’s noticed the local crowd skewing younger alongside declining interest in wine.
“It doesn’t feel sad that I’m closing, but it feels sad that things turned this way,” Brunello says.
The downtown landscape has also shifted competitively. Over the past several years, wine bars like Killer Queen and Delafia have opened nearby, as have spaces like The Oak House that offer wine as well as beer.
This marks the second closure for Brunello. The original Bar Brunello opened on Main Street in 2016 but shuttered in 2020 when the pandemic made operations untenable. In 2022, Brunello reopened as Brunello Wine Bar in a nearby space in CCB Plaza and Brunello brought longtime bartender Sergio Ramos along as co-owner. (Ramos left the wine shop in April 2023 to open his own business, Sergio Ramos Wine.)
“That was a community. This was a struggle,” Brunello says, referencing the original Bar Brunello and its later iteration, respectively.
Both versions of the bar earned a reputation for introducing patrons to gems from unexpected corners of the wine world. Brunello, an Argentina native who moved to the Triangle from the Bay Area, where he worked as a sommelier, curated an array of bottles from off-the-beaten-path producers and underrepresented wine regions, with a special focus on Italian varietals.
During his years behind the bar, Brunello witnessed a transformation in how people engage with each other in public spaces, he says.
“Everybody likes to blame the pandemic” for changes in social behavior, Brunello says, but “even before the pandemic, everybody was on their phones.” Brunello says he observed customers coming in on first dates and spending the evening scrolling through their phones, sometimes returning for second dates with the same behavior—a stark contrast to the engaged, wine-focused clientele that once defined his establishment.
Wine lovers—those who remain, anyway—won’t have to wait long for Brunello’s next venture. He plans to open a wine shop in Chapel Hill’s Governors Village around May 1. His new shop, EB Wines will focus primarily on retail sales but will also offer a selection of wines by the glass and bottle alongside some beer and cider options.
In the suburban enclave, Brunello says he expects to find a clientele that “still enjoys wine and knows how to socialize.”
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