In a former barber shop, a piece of old Durham’s bar scene has returned.
The new wine bar Delafia debuted last month at 1103 S. Roxboro St., turning the corner of a white brick building into a cozy destination for wines by the glass and a retail bottle shop.
Delafia is owned by Jesse Gerstl, who previously had the charming and influential wine spot Bar Lusconi and the Carrboro cocktail bar Peccadillo with co-owner Timothy Neill.
What’s on Delafia’s wine menu?
Like Bar Lusconi, Delafia focuses on the small producers in the world of wine.
“What it comes down to is I was missing a Lusconi-type bar, with a dark, fun, sexy vibe and I had a feeling I wasn’t the only one,” Gerstl told The N&O.
Natural wine has been the trend in wine for the last few years, though Gerstl said it doesn’t have one definition. What Delafia focuses on, he said, are wines showcasing the least amount of intervention.
“There is no common definition for what makes wine natural, but for us we’re interested in wines with the least amount of steps from grapes to bottle. That means focusing on small farms doing things more traditionally and wines that aren’t just mass produced. Good products from real farmers.”
What does ‘Delafia’ mean?
Delafia comes from an Italian slang expression which Gerstl said has no direct English translation.
In building out the bar, the walls are rough concrete showing layers of lives in the building, offering a backdrop to the L-shaped bar. One side of the space is for sharing wines and bottles by the glass, while another side is for retail pop-ins for bottles to take home.
Gerstl pointed to the Triangle’s robust collection of wine distributors as crucial to enabling Delafia’s vision, connecting wine lovers in Durham with producers making sometimes only a few hundred bottles of certain offerings.
“It’s amazing that we can get that in Durham and share that with people in our neighborhood,” Gerstl said.
Durham’s wine bar has ‘a neighborhood vibe’
Bar Lusconi debuted in 2013 and set in motion a revolving door of excellent wine bars in the 117 E. Main St. space in Durham. Lusconi handed over the reins to Brunello Wine Bar in 2016, which eventually passed the space on to Killer Queen, which calls it home now. (Brunello Wine Bar recently reopened at 123 Market St. in the middle of Durham.)
With Delafia, Gerstl looked beyond the downtown Durham blocks for a semi-gravel parking lot on South Roxboro Street, trading in the nightlife bustle for a neighborhood embrace.
Gerstl said he’s felt it already.
“The response has been shockingly good,” Gerstl said. “It’s really seemed to strike a cord with people. In its first few weeks it’s really had a neighborhood vibe and that’s ended up being a real strength.
“Durham is a very eclectic city; there’s a lot of focus on downtown. But I felt like there’s an opportunity for little retail spaces to come back to life.”
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