When Brian McGonigle ’87 founded the San Francisco Wine Center in 2006, he envisioned it as a gathering place for serious wine collectors. He offered climate controlled wine storage lockers, a place for his storage clients to connect with one another, and a wine school for novices and collectors alike. But for years, McGonigle also wanted to open a restaurant/bar so he could share his favorite hard-to-find bottles with the public.
That dream became a reality on March 17, 2021, when McGonigle opened the Indie Wine and Beer Bar at the Wine Center’s headquarters in San Francisco’s Barbary Coast neighborhood. “There were so many unknowns at that time,” he says. “We kept wondering: when were people coming back downtown?” But the spot came with its own permanent 20′ x 100′ outdoor space, which gave McGonigle a boost. Earlier this year, the Indie Wine and Beer Bar won a Diner’s Choice Award from OpenTable.com, naming it one of the 10 best restaurants in San Francisco. “That was really gratifying,” McGonigle says, “because it was all driven by user reviews.”
Diners love the Indie Bar’s seafood- and charcuterie-heavy menu, but the real draw is what McGonigle calls the “over-the-top” wine list. The list changes weekly and features wines rarely found by the glass, including 15 wines under $15 a glass, all of which have been aged 15 years.
McGonigle came by his love of wines naturally. Growing up in Chatham, N.J., and Manhattan, he had a father who collected wine and introduced his children to it as teenagers, offering them small sips, like European parents do.
A political science and economics major at Colgate, McGonigle worked for U.S. Senator Bill Bradley after graduation. To make ends meet, he moonlighted as a bartender in D.C. Because he was the only one at the bar who knew anything about wine, he also wrote the wine list. After moving to San Francisco, for another job in politics, he realized that his true love was wine. He worked for several large producers until he opened the San Francisco Wine Center in the city’s South of Market neighborhood. The center was one of the country’s first wine storage facilities for private collectors that also offered them a place to gather, learn, and share great wine and food.
Because of the 2008 recession, the business got off to a slow start. But it grew enough that by 2010, McGonigle was able to open the center’s wine school, bringing in master sommeliers and masters of wine to teach students about wine from all over the world. “We focus mostly on European wines, because these are often very complex wine regions, with really ageable wines,” he says. “A lot of Italian, French, German, and Spanish wines age much better than the typical domestic California wine.” After outgrowing his original space, he moved in 2019 to his current 10,000-square-foot space, which offers 200 refrigerated storage lockers, a stylish classroom, and the restaurant. He also ships wine to customers all over the country (including Colgate alumni).
Neighborhood businesses, such as Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn, have started booking happy hours and team events at the Indie Wine Bar, as has the Emerson Collective, the nonprofit started by Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs.
That’s partly what McGonigle loves most about his work: the interesting people he meets, from the Fisher family (founders of The Gap) to a former Google board member, all of whom store wine at his facility. “There’s this really vibrant conversation about wine that happens,” he says, “and then people start talking about all the other things they do. Most of them are incredibly successful people, so I get to have some really cool conversations.”
McGonigle played soccer for Colgate all four years and was named the MVP his senior year.