Mysterious wine moves: Corkscrew reappears in the Heights

UPDATE: CultureMap spoke to Corkscrew owner Andrew Adams Wednesday and got some more info to dispel some of the mystery. The address of Corkscrew 2.0 is 1308 West 20th St., about 300 yards down from Cedar Creek. The new Corkscrew will take much from the old Corkscrew, including speed dating and Wineapalooza, but this version will also have a liquor license — the one good thing that Adams says came out of "that disastrous Sugarcane."

Investors were indeed assembled from that January email in just 45 days. There's a mess of them, and some own shares as small as .01 percent. (Adams compares his investors to the community owners of the Green Bay Packers. "It's like a whole town owns a smidgen of something.") The brothers, of course, still own a controlling interest.

The place is going through inspections now and aims for a soft opening in the first couple weeks of June. It's 2,000 square feet inside with 600 square feet of outside patio space and room to expand. Hours are 4 p.m. till midnight Sunday through Thursday, and 4 p.m. till 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

-------------------------

Corkscrew wine bar, formerly located at 1919 Washington, before it bit the dust in favor of an organic cocktail bar called Sugarcane (which shortly also bit the dust), is reopening in the Heights at 20th Street and Beavis.

The old Corkscrew sign was spotted at the new place by a tipster, who gave us the news.

CultureMap first reported back in December that brothers Andrew and Doyle Adams planned to revive their much-loved wine bar in the Heights. Corkscrew enjoyed a loyal following at its Washington Avenue location, but the changing demographic of the corridor, compounded by the proliferation of seemingly countless other nearby wine bars, moved the brothers to shut the place down in February 2010 and try something new.

We were fans of the duo's (eco)cktail concept, Sugarcane, but the wait time for Veev-based and other organic cocktails proved too much for the thirsty Washington Avenue crowds, and the bar shut its doors in November.

That space remains in flux. There was briefly a sign outside for a new bar called "Privileged," but that's given way to a new sign that says "Lava," and we've (admittedly) never been to either.

In January, the brothers sent an email blast out to potential investors looking for financing for a Heights Corkscrew location. Whether or not that "very unorthodox and highly unusual" method worked or whether the brothers assembled a more formal group of investors is unclear.

At the time of publication, calls to owner Andrew Adams (who, along with his brother, also used to own The Drinkery) went unreturned.