Made in NY
by real people
for pizza

Highly crushable, sparkling red wine.

We love wine—but what’s up with wine culture?

We’re restaurant and bar people, and we’ve seen firsthand how cliquey the wine world can be. Like it wants you to feel insecure, out of place, and not that smart.

Oh I'm sorry, is this not how you hold a glass?

But we found a world we’re obsessed with — farmers, soil, intention, friends, dinner parties, and good products made by real people.

Why is that so hard to find in 2025??

We built Pizza Wine to share that world — it’s a wine for people who love farmers, soil, friends, dinner parties, and delicious things made by real people. It doesn’t judge you, test you, or demand validation. It’s just a well-made wine that you can drink however you want and not feel guilty about.

We could spend hours explaining why this pizza and wine pairing works — how the structure perfectly balances the acidity in the tomatoes and cheese — but that’s not our vibe.

Drink it from the can, pour it over ice, or mix it with Coke for all we care.

This isn’t the next evolution of natural wine or fine dining. Just a highly crushable, insanely delicious sparkling red that’s great with pizza and great without. Hope you love it.

our story

We’ve spent our careers building experiences that make people feel welcome.

Meet Rob & Liz — the hospitality people behind Pizza Wine

Pizza Wine started the way most good things do — quite literally, over a bar.

I met Rob when he walked into my wine bar, notebook in hand, picking Italian wines for his restaurant list. It was more than satisfying to watch him find out that “the kids who opened a hipster wine bar across the street” had a deep, classical wine list, stored properly, served in glassware that respects the product and had no problem pouring him Burgundy with Kanye pumping in the background.

I opened Fortnight Wine Bar to make people feel welcome. It was casual, a little chaotic, but never condescending. We had a $6 white and a $6 red that you could order knowing that it would have a story and it wouldn’t be gross.

People came in for a pilsner, tried the $6 wine, and a year later were drinking Gredos garnacha for $18 a glass. It was a 1990 Chateau d’Yquem that got me into wine, and I was on a mission to pay it forward.

Rob had spent years cooking in fine-dining kitchens, where everything had to be just right. It’s where he learned precision, discipline, and how a great wine pairing can make a single bite of food unforgettable (it was a Jamet syrah and bite of lamb, specifically). But fine dining is also a world of rules. Opening Pizza Marvin was a reaction to all of that — a deliberate rebellion. He brought the same attention to detail but left the stuffiness, delivering hospitality through local sourcing, loud music, and a fun, irreverent space.

The tension between taking wine seriously and not taking yourself too seriously is what led us to Pizza Wine. We wanted a wine that could live in both worlds: something made with intention but built for real life.

Sparkling red was the answer. It’s playful, a little unexpected, and impossible to overthink. Italians have been drinking it with pizza for hundreds of years.

We couldn’t find one that tasted the way we wanted, so we made it ourselves.

the wine

We make Pizza Wine the Lake Erie AVA of New York State — one of the oldest grape-growing regions in the country. Think rolling vineyards, shale & gravelly soil, and lake air that keeps the climate cool and even.

Our winemaking partner, Johnson Estate Winery, has been farming here for over a century:

The vineyard runs on hydropower from Niagara Falls.
Every seed, stem, and skin is returned to the soil.
Cover crops and native grasses protect against erosion.
The farm is a net carbon sink, pulling more CO₂ from the atmosphere than it emits.

We use French-American hybrid grape varietals — Chancellor, Foch, and Vidal Blanc — that are well suited to this climate. That means fewer sprays, healthier vines, and clean fruit that doesn’t need fixing later. These grapes also allow us to make a wine that’s naturally bright, low in alcohol, and refreshing instead of heavy.

There’s nothing added here that doesn’t belong. Just grapes, fermented carefully, stabilized naturally, and canned under clean, controlled conditions. No artificial flavors, no concentrates, and no “natural” flavors or additives.

The result is a bright, zippy sparkling red with great acid, a bit of texture, lots of flavor and not even a little bit of sweetness (you’re welcome).