Posh NYC wine shop faces panicked customers who fret their prized vintages are lost or sold
A posh wine store in Chelsea is facing off against panicked customers who claim that the shop’s storage service is dodging their calls and emails as they desperately seek the return of their prized vintages, The Post has learned.
In a fermenting crisis that has sparked litigation including eviction proceedings, Chelsea Wine Storage, owned by the proprietors of the acclaimed Chelsea Wine Co. store, has been impossible to reach since the beginning of November, sources said.
The 25-year-old business has stonewalled numerous panicked customers who have been trying to get their wines out of the unfinished basement of a shuttered TGI Friday’s off Times Square at 777 Seventh Ave., according to sources.
Hundreds of cardboard boxes have been stacked up inside the 10,000-square-foot cellar, filled with wines that in some cases are rare, pricey labels including white Burgundys like 2011 Coche-Dury Meursault, which goes for $1,200 a bottle, and Faiveley Batard Montrachet, which sells for $490 a bottle, according to inventory lists viewed by The Post.
The high-dollar booze has been sitting on wooden pallets for months, according to a source who has been inside the space and shared photos with The Post.
Desperate clients “have even knocked on the door and tried to get in” at the street-level entrance, which shows a barely visible address above the door, a source familiar with the situation told The Post.
Some fear the worst following the high-profile implosion of Sherry-Lehmann, the venerable Manhattan wine store that hasn’t returned hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of expensive wine belonging to the retailer’s storage customers and which is being investigated by the FBI.
“With no response, I am afraid my wines in storage are gone for good,” a CWS customer posted on Yelp on Oct. 23.
Others shared their concerns in recent weeks on wineberserkers.com: “Been a customer for 18 years, now they have gone silent…”
Another posted, “I cannot get them to answer emails or phone calls, and I am extremely worried about my collection…some of my most prized bottles somehow no longer appear in my inventory.”
Until last year, the wine store — formerly called Chelsea Wine Vault — and its storage space were located in the Chelsea Market for more than two decades.
They were founded in the 1990s by Daniel Barteluce, an architect who designed luxury retail stores around the world including Chanel and Cartier, and Donald Kurt, a TV producer who worked on the FX series “Justified.”
CWS also has stored wine for some of the city’s elite restaurants — including Gotham Bar and Grill, the River Cafe and Craft — and allowed customers to retrieve their collections from personal lockers below the store whenever they wanted.
Kurt and Barteluce’s partnership ended in litigation in 2015 when Kurt accused Barteluce of trying to swindle him out of a $330,000 loan to the business.
Kurt also claimed the companies had been “mismanaged” by Barteluce’s daughter, Amelia Gancarz, according to court documents.
Barteluce could not be reached for comment. Kurt did not return calls and emails.
The lawsuit was settled.
Last year the storage business decamped to Midtown while the store moved across the street from the market to 60 Ninth Ave. — but both businesses fell into rent arrears, according to court documents.
Amelia and her husband, Michael Gancarz, are the “sole owners” of the two businesses, according to another lawsuit filed on Nov. 14 in Manhattan federal court by Grand Cru Liquid Assets, a fine wine brokerage firm.
The latter alleges that it bought $349,000 worth of Burgundy from the Gancarzes and their businesses in May and never received the wine.
The Gancarzes refunded Grand Cru $165,000, saying they never had possession of the Burgundy.
They still owe the broker $184,000 plus 12% interest, according to the complaint.
The Gancarzes’ landlord at both locations is Delshah Capital, which sued the businesses this month for months of unpaid rent, including a basement space below the wine store in Chelsea that the Gancarzes recently converted into a lounge, according to court documents.
The lounge, which has a DJ booth and a separate entrance from the store, is lacking critical permits, an employee for the landlord said, including “construction permits, a legal certificate of occupancy, and an inspection and sign-off from FDNY for a fire alarm inspection.”
“Their irresponsibility is hurting a lot of people including employees who haven’t been paid, customers and their landlord,” said Michael Shah, head of Delshah Capital. “I think they are undercapitalized and completely disorganized.”
The Gancarzes did not return calls and emails for comment, but their lawyer Louis Chisari said the couple blame “staff shortages” for the lack of communication with their storage customers.
He also said the complaints over unpaid rent “are being dealt with between the attorney(s)” and disputed that the lounge is missing city permits.
Among customers’ fears is that their wine has been sold, misplaced and held at the wrong temperature, sources told The Post.
Chelsea Wine Storage was sued by at least two customers in 2018 and 2019 who allege the company confiscated their collections over credit card billing errors involving their storage fees, according to court documents.
Elisa Kwon de Alvarez alleged that CWS seized 65 cases of her wine over a credit-card mishap that resulted in her CWS account being $5,000 in arrears, according to reports at the time.
The case was settled, according to court documents. Alvarez did not respond to queries for comment.
Another customer accused CWS of selling his wine at the company’s Chelsea store after a billing error resulted in him owing CWS more than $6,000 for storage fees, according to the 2018 complaint in New York state court.
The customer, Michael Moriarity, alleged that his wine collection was worth up to $200,000 and started showing up on shelves at Chelsea Wine Vault for sale.
CWS’ customer contract allows it to “dispose” of customers’ wine if they don’t pay their storage fees, according to court filings.
But Moriarity repeatedly tried to pay the fees when he became aware of the non-payment problem and was “rebuffed” by CWS, his suit claims.
His wine “was not, in fact, disposed of, but instead is on the shelves of Chelsea Wine Vault for sale,” the suit claims, citing a store employee who confirmed that some bottles at the store came from “a storage customer.”
At a hearing, the judge said he was “confused” as to why CWS would sell more wine than it was owed in storage fees.
“I don’t understand how you could sell it,” New York Judge Franc Perry said at a hearing, according to a transcript. “If it was worth $100,000 and your bill was only for $6,000, sell the amount of wine or dispose the amount of wine for $6,000 and give him his wine back.”
That case was also settled in August 2019.
“Michael and Amelia take the position that they never did anything inappropriate with people’s wine,” Chisari told The Post, adding that both cases were “resolved.”
Meanwhile, as word spread about customers’ problems, other storage companies, including Manhattan Wine Co. and River Valley Wine Cellars, seized an opportunity.
“We’ve not been able to reach anyone at CWS since the end of October,” Michael Mahle, general manager of River Valley Wine Cellars, told The Post.
A customer who did not want to be identified and who enlisted Mahle’s help to get his collection out of the Seventh Avenue basement is also questioning CWS’s erratic billing.
“Somewhere along the way, my monthly storage locker fee skyrocketed from $77/month initially (in 2015) to $277/month plus there have been massive one-time payments of thousands of dollars on top of that,” including an inexplicable charge for $2,498, the customer wrote in an email to CWS viewed by The Post.
The customer received no response to this query, he said.
Meanwhile, rival storage firm Manhattan Wine obtained 1,200 bottles in late October from Chelsea Wine Storage on behalf of a customer — but 240 bottles turned out not to belong to the customer, Joel Rubins, director of operations, told The Post.
CWS picked up the wrong bottles, but the client is still missing 240 bottles, Rubins said.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, River Valley Wine and Manhattan Wine got emails from CWS saying customers’ collections could be picked up — after The Post reached out to ownership multiple times.
The CWS email, signed by the “Storage Team,” also said, “I apologize for the delay. Our storage manager is no longer with the company for this reason of lack of communication with customers.”
On Saturday, Michael Gancarz got into an altercation with another tenant at the Seventh Avenue storage facility who claimed he boarded up “common space” that all the tenants share including access to an elevator and emergency exit, a retail tenant who did not want to be identified told The Post.
The tenant called the NYPD after Gancarz became aggressive with one of his employees, the tenant claimed in an interview with The Post.
“Michael believes that the common space to the elevator was exclusively his,” his lawyer told The Post. “It is our position that Michael misunderstood” the terms of his lease.
