In the 4 years since Christina Pirovitz-Williams opened her wine bar on Bay Street in Downtown Savannah, it has become a staple for locals. That’s hard to say these days because of one undeniable truth: Locals are visiting downtown Savannah less and less all the time. Parking and prices are two leading reasons.

Christina has felt the pitch and has spent a lot of time trying to plan for her establishment’s future. She’s planning to secure a liquor license from the city and begin offering cocktails.

Below is my chat with Christina where she explains the reasoning for the move and what you can expect during your next visit to 208 Wine and Cocktail Bar. Or you can listen to the conversation on our Eat It and Like It Podcast.

Jesse Blanco: Welcome back to the Eat It and Like It Like It podcast, it is wine time here in Savannah, the coast of Georgia. We’re talking with an old dear friend of the program, her name is Christina Pirovitz Williams–added Williams because she is now a bride. Good morning. How are you?

Christina Pirovitz Williams: I mean, I’m doing great. It’s been a very exciting year now that I am officially off the market. 

JB: Yeah, that was a big deal, that was in May, right?

CPW: That was in May, we had a huge surprise wedding, that was a great experience, raised money for Alzheimer’s Association and had the best cake of my life from Trombone Bakery.

JB: It was properly sliced, that’s why.

CPW: I mean, it took a real pro. Thank you, Sheila.

JB: That’s a little bit of an inside joke, you had your wedding reception at 208 Wine Bar, which we will talk about more in a second, and everybody was there and the cake was there and everybody wanted to eat cake and there was no one around to slice it. And, a lot of people don’t know, my wife is, by hobby, a baker, so she knows how to handle cakes. And so she jumped up and started slicing the cakes beautifully and everybody got slices of cake.

CPW: Yeah. It was the best slice cake I’ve ever seen. And she’s an incredible teacher.

JB: Yeah, she’s good at that, boy, whenever there’s cake involved, I volunteer her, “here, go deal with the cake.” 

CPW: Sheila’s red velvet cake… that’s all I can say. Can’t wait for the holidays. 

JB: Yes, and for my birthday every year, she used to make me a carrot cake. And I asked her to lay off of that because I’m A, watching my girlish figure, but B, after like 10 years in a row of carrot cake, I’m like, okay, I’m ready for something else. Yeah, every cake she’s–98% of the cakes she’s ever made are fantastic. But we’re not here to talk about cake! We’re talking about the big news that you have coming up at 208 Wine Bar. First of all, let’s give a little bit of background for those people who are listening and/or watching that don’t know, tell us a little bit about 208 Wine Bar there on Bay Street.

CPW: Yeah, so we have been around for just over four years now, started this project kind of spontaneously. If you’re a customer, you know about us. I still hear four years later, “we didn’t even know you existed.” But we started this by creating the wine bar that we wanted to go to.

Not pretentious, lots of selections, beautiful view… we wanted to keep the history of Savannah alive within our space. We completely scrapped our business model from the six months build out with people coming to our doors, and it just has grown into something so incredible. Like I said, the customer base that we have, they’re no longer just customers. Every friend I have, I’ve made there. They’ve worked there. They’ve volunteered at our events when we do fundraisers. I mean, it’s more than just wine, which is exactly the whole point of a space like this. Yeah, it’s been an interesting journey of four years.

JB: Yeah, and you, the headliner, we’ll talk about in a little more detail in a second, you are now going to be offering liquor drinks, correct?

CPW: Yes, so we are less than one month away from our City Hall hearing. And as long as there are no snags, we will be getting that permit in hand on the 9th. And on October 10th, I’m going to be making some margaritas. We will be celebrating… it is a necessary step for us at this stage.

JB: Fair enough, fair enough. And I’ve got a few questions about that, but I do want to ask you to give us a little bit more detail about your space, how old the building is–I mean, for those who have never been, it really is–you’ve done such a beautiful job with decorating that. You have two or three windows that look out onto River Street, out onto the river, you can’t really see River Street because it’s straight down, but looking out over the river… tell us more about the space. How old is it, for starters?

CPW: So it was built by a man named John Stoddard in the 1850s, so he was a part of the cotton trade, he was a factor, you see Factor’s Walk everywhere–those were the businessmen in this trade and those spaces were very vital in their trade. So that was where the offices were, downstairs, lower Factor’s Walk had a lot of storage units. My unit has had a few interesting businesses in it, from an electric company to most recently an antique shop right before me. But yeah, it has seen some things, and I wanted to kind of stay true to what it was. It is a gorgeous space, if you see, we’re a corner unit right on Bay Street between Abercorn and Lincoln, and we are mostly windows, so when you pull up to my space you look from the street and you can see right through all the way to the river. It is just–it’s very beautiful, and we wanted to keep it simple, we want to talk about what’s in there. People ask us all the time, and I feel like we talk almost more about history, the building, and food more than wine sometimes.

JB: Well, that’s part of the deal when you come to these historic buildings, particularly down on River Street. You know, the tourists come here for that reason. How much education did you feel like, after you opened, that you had to do to keep up with the demand for curiosity about the history of that space?

CPW: Oh, for sure, I’ve done my research. We have tried to dive as deep as we could to find the history of not just us, but other businesses like us. You know, we throw back all the way to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, I’ve been trying to find Emma Kelly’s old bar on River Street. But we’ve also been in touch with the family of the man who built my building. So once he saw us start to honor the family history on our website, he reached out to us, and came and sat down with us with a little binder filled with family–old family rumors and history and more documentation. And it was pretty cool to get to see that and learn more than the average person has access to. 

JB: Yeah! Yeah, I had no idea. I’ve known you five years and I had no idea. Wow.

CPW: Yeah, next time I see you, I’ll tell you all the secrets. These are secrets that you have to come to the bar to hear. 

JB: Really? OK, alright. One secret per glass of wine. You offered a significant variety of wine, you didn’t overdo it, you had, what? I would guess a dozen by the glass-ish?

CPW: Well, when we first opened, we had about 10 on our soft opening menu. It was rather small. I still have it, I still have a copy of that sitting on my desk to remind me where we started. There are some ones still on my list today. We have about 85 ones by the glass right now.

JB: 85? I didn’t know that.

CPW: Yeah, I’m not good at reining myself in. 

JB: Apparently not. 

CPW: We have a massive list, which is why I have to be really careful during this next step, but I will be cutting that back a little bit over the next few days.

JB: I would hope so. 85, that has to be the biggest selection of wines by the glass in the city. Has to be. Not even close.

CPW: I do believe it is. I go to all the other wine bars myself, so we do have a lot of selection and I love being able to offer a little bit of everything. There’s still more I would love to add, but our space is under 1200 square feet.

JB: Yeah. And so now, how long had you been giving thought to, ‘I’d like to make this a full liquor and wine bar’?

CPW: It’s been over a year. So we’ve been at this thinking about it, knowing that in order to grow as a business–I mean, and we’ve done almost everything at this point that a wine bar can do. For over a year, we’ve been trying to look at wine based cocktails. There’s a very limited selection of wine based spirits like agave wine, fake vodka… and that could only get you so far. Just like with wine, there’s nuance in whiskey, in rum, in all of these things. We gave wine based cocktails a try, and I did that with the support of some incredible bartenders here, my staff, other business owners that have stepped in and wanted to offer their expertise to us, but the real deal is the only thing that’s gonna work. So I’ve been hesitant to do it, because my goal is to remain a wine bar, the best wine bar, and keep our focus there. I know that’s what a lot of our customers come for. When you’re looking for wine in this town, you look to us. So I don’t want to do too much too fast, but… 

JB: That’s interesting. That’s interesting, because a lot of places, you know, all they’re out there [doing] is chasing as many dollars as they can, but I hear you saying, “no, I’m going to stay to a wine bar. But I want to be able to offer a real cocktail, a well prepared cocktail to someone who wants that, if they’re there with their wife who’s drinking the Chardonnelle.”

CPW:

Exactly. Yeah, so I’ll tell you, we carry beer. We always have since day one. I pay three times the dollar amount for my beer license than I do for my wine license. And it’s because you have to have it there for those—not everyone’s into wine. Wine can be intimidating. It is an acquired taste. So, knowing how much I pay just to have beer there, to appease the people that have a wife that want to sit there and look out the window at the ships go by and enjoy her, you know, sparkling Chardonnay, you have to have it. 

JB: Or rosé.

CPW: Yeah, that. Rosé all day. And so just knowing that, and also, how many people have walked out my door because I don’t have a vodka soda? Something as simple as a vodka soda, takes no skill to assemble, minimal cost to sell, and I’ve watched money walk out my door.

JB: Yeah, that’s gotta be tough. So when did you decide, after seeing people walk out the door, when was the decision made–let me back up. How much thought did you put into what it would look like once you got a full liquor license?

CPW: So… thought? More like nightmares. I’ve been thinking about what I have to do to make this work. People don’t realize how intricate a back bar can be. What my line is gonna look like… in my head, I said, I want a maximum of six cocktails. If you look at my menu, that’s a lie, alright, right now I have to pare it down from 20 proposed cocktails that–you have to have the standards, I wanna keep it top shelf, I wanna keep it classy… like I said, I don’t want this to be our main focus, but I’m gonna have to, over the course of the next six months, recreate what the interior of my bar, like the back bar, looks like. Make this happen. But we’ve been putting a lot of thought into this, for myself, dreaming about it for a year, buckling down for the past six months, knowing that it’s happening. And it’s going to be a big change.

JB: Yeah, no it is, but the good thing is you have a little larger than average space behind your bar. That’s how it was built. You built that bar.

CPW: Yes. Yeah. It’s still little bit limiting because of all the requirements that we must have, just for the health department, different kinds of sinks. So I know that eventually I’m going to have to make some plumbing changes, just some–the visual changes I don’t care about, I’m ready to tear that out right now, but just, the space you need to make this happen. I’ve had some career bartenders, bar managers back there helping me assess what needs to be done. And it’s significant. I was pretty surprised. But we’re doing it. Eventually, like I said, slow roll. We’re going to start off the next month–I’m not doing anything until I have in my hands a word that says, okay, it’s a green light. You know, we’ve had nothing but support from the Downtown Neighborhood Association, the people at the revenue department. But until you’re holding that paper, you know, I’m not signing any checks.

JB: Yeah, I get it. And so this is still going to be called 208 Wine Bar, yes? Or Wine Bar and Cocktails?

CPW: So 208 Wine Bar, I do want to include Cocktail Lounge in the title at some point soon, because I want people to know they can come and grab a cocktail, have a drink, bring their friends who are not into wine. I do a lot of events as bachelorette parties that, their friends are not into wine. The bride is, a few of them are, and the others sit there like, well, I guess I’ll have a rose.

JB: “You got any Moscato?”

CPW: We have Moscato now!

JB: Yeah, I’m sure you’ve gotten that. “I’ll just have the white Zinfandel.”

CPW: You know, if you come to one of my guided wine tastings, I do a whole spiel on white Zinfandel. But, corporate events as well. When you talk about things like holiday parties, the biggest party of the year, St. Patrick’s Day, not having that license or people not knowing that they can come to us for these things, loses you about a month’s rent over the course of a week. So yeah, especially looking towards St. Pat’s.

JB: I get it. Yeah, so you could rent out the space once you have a liquor license, if you wanted to.

CPW: Yeah, so I do that anyway. I rent it out. It’s already booked this year. It’s coming. 

JB: Nice! Good for you. It’s a Tuesday next year. So you’re still you said 85 glasses, 85 ones by the glass. Is that going to change at all? Are you going to try to stay above 70?

CPW: So, you know, I lie to myself when I say I want to cut it down to around 50. 60 I felt was the sweet spot. You get, you know, our customers, we have loyal customers that come back every week. So sometimes they get bored, sometimes I get bored, I keep adding, and there are some things that you just can’t take away, that are so popular, or that, when you’re helping somebody discover wine, which is, I think, what we do really well, you have to have these things on the list. So my goal… between 60 and 70. And the main issue really is just storage space. I have been looking for ways to keep it there. And maybe once we find our footing with cocktails, I have no problem going back to 85. I would be happy to keep it there. 

JB: Yeah! I like it. No TVs, no plans for any of that nonsense, and no food.

CPW: Well, we have a television that nobody knows is a TV, because it actually features local artists’ art all the time. So we do a lot of events with local artists. This year I’ve been doing a lot of art vendor pop-ups with those who have smaller scale artwork. A way to get them in the bar when my walls can’t accommodate just small pieces. But I’ve thought about golf and soccer. But I don’t want to alienate the people who love to come to 208 for that more adult, quiet vibe, you know, there’s not a lot of screaming bachelorettes… there’s no children are allowed on premises, which is the city’s law, it’s not mine. But I feel like people that are looking to have some peace and quiet, watch the cargo ships go by, enjoy their not necessarily inexpensive glass of wine, don’t want to have TVs blaring… though it does help at this time of year. We see a major slowdown the first few weeks of football season.

JB: Oh, of course, of course. Everybody runs to their Saturday post up for them dawgs. So you go before the city on October the 8th, and you’re hoping to be making margaritas, fixing margaritas as they say around here, on the 9th, right?

CPW: So no, we get our license on the 9th, the 10th will be, hopefully I can get some liquor in place. Normally it takes–you have to have a certain license to order it. So hopefully I’ll have some very kind distributors waiting at the door the second I open the next day, ready to get me some of the goods, but I think the first drink is gonna have to be my family recipe margarita to get that ball rolling. And I am planning, as we do with everything else, I’m planning a little bit of a tasting. I’ve had so much help from the local community. Like I said, whether it includes them jumping behind the bar and bartending when I need to be out of town, whether I need something built or fixed… I want to have friends at 208 in the bar for some tastings. Let’s figure out which is the best espresso martini, which is going to be the best margarita and we’ll figure that out together.

JB: Well, I will be in town that weekend. It’s actually the only weekend out of like eight of them that I will be in town, so I will be there on the 10th. If all goes well, I’ll be there on the 10th trying one of your family recipe margaritas. Sounds good.

CPW: Awesome. I always appreciate your support.

JB: No problem, no problem at all. I’m excited for you. This is gonna be good. And I wanna stress again that this isn’t about changing a wine bar over to a cocktail bar. You’re still obviously gonna have a lot of different wines by the glass, and bottles, but you’re adding cocktails. I think that’s important.

CPW: Yeah. It’s more about survival in this town. It’s been a slow summer, a scary environment for small business owners here in Savannah. And I’ve watched some of the bigger players who have way more experience, way more resources than I do, still stumbling or closing their doors. And am I crazy to think that we can make it? I mean, yeah, I’m crazy, but we’re going to do it. I’m not giving this up. We have something special there, and we’re going to make it. 

JB: You gotta do it. Well, good luck to you. I would anticipate everything going well on the ninth and we will see you on the tenth. One last thing I do want to mention, no food.

CPW: So we still have, we have small tapas. We have tapas and cheese boards. And I am currently talking to a few local chefs because we have not done as many pop-ups, food pop-ups or wine dinners this year. We have found ways to have food at the bar unofficially, but we are not—we don’t have a kitchen. So I am working really hard to get some exciting things through the door. And I promise you won’t be disappointed. 

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