2021 continues to percolate with news of new restaurants and drinking establishments set to open in the not too distant future in and around Savannah’s food scene. The latest announcement is from Christina Pirovits and James Divine. Two friends who have decided to take the plunge and open 208 Wine Bar on Savannah’s Factors Walk.

As of this writing, they are hopeful to open in March. That said, their original plan was to open in February, but…it’s Savannah. Construction delays are bound to happen, especially downtown.

Christina and James joined us for a talk on our television show last weekend on WTOC to tell us all about it. Here is a section of our chat.

How long have you been in Savannah? You’ve been here for a while, especially you James, right?

JD: Yeah, I’ve been here 12 years. I came here for a vacation, loved it. I moved here 5 weeks later and wouldn’t go anywhere else. Like a lot of people here, I was fleeing the cold and the snow up North. I’ve been living on Wilmington Island the whole time. I absolutely love it here.

For the last 10 years, I’ve been working in IT on the corporate side. So I work primarly remote by day.

CP: Because of COVID, we couldn’t do much travel. James was over on Bay Street getting some breakfast as he did once a week and he saw our space. He sent me a picture of it. The story pretty much wrote itself from there.

I took one look at it and I said “We’re doing this, aren’t we?”

When was this?

CP: This was the first week of September. I moved here in June of 2019 and was unemployed. James always said ‘if you can’t find the job you like, make one yourself.’ So here we are.

Why a wine bar?

CP: Why not?

JD: This is actually my second venture into the wine bar arena. About two years ago, I started talking to my parents about opening a wine shop. Modeled not too differently than the Savannah Wine Cellar over in 12 Oaks. I love Bridgette. I’ve been going there since they opened.

One thing that we’ve noticed in our travels is that wine bars are great relaxation spaces in tourist areas. You go to St Augustine, there’s 4 or 5 different options to enjoy a wine flight.

CP: We’ve researched there, very hard. (laughs)

How are you guys educating yourselves on the right price point for the type of visitor that will be walking around down there?

JD: We go downtown and drink a lot. (laughs). We do a lot of market research in both the analytical and going downtown to see who’s around. You made a comment about the changing face of downtown and River Street.

There is an evolution going on with Plant Riverside and the JW Marriott. They are attracting a slightly different crowd than what’s been there in the past. We feel this type of venue is very much in line with who the city is starting to target with these new developments.

CP: Our intended open date was supposed to be mid-February. Now we are looking at St Patrick’s Day. We will say what our guests have to say. So we ask everyone to come have a drink with us. I will be bar tending.

We will have some food items, but they will be brought in from other places. We learned in a previous build out that I was a part of that building a kitchen is very expensive and it’s hard to get a return on that investment. So, we will be offering some bites, but we won’t have a kitchen.