Corks wine bar leaving Old Town. Owners plan to reopen in new location, with a new name
A wine bar and live music venue that has been in the Bluffton Promenade since 2007 is serving its last Old Town customers on Saturday night.
Corks Wine Bar and Restaurant is closing its doors after its lease was not renewed. That’s not the end of the story, though.
Owner Neil Ritter and his wife, Lorrie, who bought Corks in 2018, expect to reopen their business this fall in a new location and with a new name.
UnCorked Wine, Bar, Food and Music is already in the works at Moss Creek Village on the Bluffton side of the Hilton Head bridges.
“It’s all gonna work out better, I think,” Ritter said. “Yeah, just a lot of work, that’s all.”
Moss Creek Village is already home to several popular restaurants, including Olive and Fig Mediterranean Kitchen and the new Mama G’s Pizza Bistro and Bar.
The new location is slightly larger than the current one, but right now, it’s just a rectangular space that needs to be renovated to fit the Ritters’ vision.
“The unit is perfect for what we wanted,” Ritter said.
UnCorked will have a larger kitchen. A bar will have to be constructed, but the stage is being moved from Old Town. Upgraded lighting and sound systems are also in the plans.
“It’s going to be a major focus on music,” Ritter said. “That’s the theme of the whole place. We’ll still have wine, we’ll still have a bar, we’ll still have food, but [live] music is front and center for us.”
An all-day music festival attended by an estimated 1,000 people earlier this month raised money to help keep bartenders afloat while the new location is being renovated. All the bartenders will be moving to the new venue.
“Honestly we were gonna shut down the place totally and just say, ‘Let’s move on with our lives,” Ritter said. “I’m 65 almost. ... And then we thought about the employees that we have and all the musicians that we support all year, and we said, “We can’t do it. We can’t walk away.”
This story was originally published July 19, 2022 at 12:58 PM.
