Something to Wine About, the self-pour wine lounge that anchored a corner of Downtown Cincinnati's 4th & Race development, closed its doors on September 11 after 21 months in business. Founder Orlando “Lando” Chapman had signaled the move was coming, announcing in August that the business was searching for a new location before shutting down the original space.
The closure marks the end of the venue's run in a 3,580-square-foot storefront inside the Cincinnati Center City Development Corp.'s 4th & Race development, according to Local 12. Something to Wine About held its grand opening on December 7, 2024, and had operated at 136 W. 4th Street for nearly two years before the September shutdown, per Cincinnati CityBeat. The 4th & Race development itself is a 14-story, mixed-use tower valued at up to $118 million, built through a public-private partnership between 3CDC, Flaherty & Collins Properties, and the City of Cincinnati, and it includes 264 luxury apartments and a 700-space parking garage.
A Self-Pour Concept Born From a New Orleans Trip
The wine bar's signature draw was its self-pour system, which let customers use prepaid reloadable cards — typically loaded with $25 or $50 — to dispense one-ounce tastings or six- and nine-ounce glasses straight from automated wine spigots. Cincinnati Magazine has reported that Chapman was inspired to bring the concept home after visiting a self-pour wine lounge in New Orleans a decade earlier. When it launched in late 2024, Something to Wine About was promoted as the only self-pour wine bar operating in Downtown Cincinnati's Fountain District, per the same CityBeat report.
Beyond the pour-your-own novelty, the lounge built its identity around inventory curation. The menu spotlighted Black- and minority-owned winemakers such as House of Brown, Markell-Bani, and Kumusha, with bottles sourced from South Africa, Australia, Italy, and California alongside food items like jerk chicken rasta pasta.
A Longtime Promoter's Leap Into Retail
Chapman was already a well-known figure in Cincinnati nightlife before opening the wine bar. He founded party promotion firm RilEntertainment in July 2012, building it around “Lando's Old School Happy Hour,” a weekly event that drew 700 to 1,000 patrons every Friday from 2010 to 2015, a five-year span, and targeted the 30-and-older demographic with R&B and hip-hop programming, according to The Voice of Black Cincinnati.
That track record fed directly into the wine bar's downtown lease. Before signing at 4th & Race, Chapman had partnered with 3CDC for years on public civic events, including hosting the annual “All White & Wine Affair” on Fountain Square for crowds of up to 5,000 guests, CityBeat has reported. 3CDC's involvement in the 4th & Race development made the wine bar's lease something of a natural extension of a relationship that predated the storefront itself.
Community Programming Beyond the Bar
During its downtown run, the lounge hosted book clubs, live R&B performances, and official “Lando Chapman Day” civic proclamations, according to RilEntertainment. The programming reflected the venue's role as a social hub for the region's mature R&B audience, not just a retail wine stop.
Another Ohio Self-Pour Lounge Goes Up for Sale Cleveland's first self-pour wine lounge, Wyne, was put up for sale in September after four years in business, Hoodline reported.
Where Chapman plans to relocate Something to Wine About, and whether the new site will retain the full self-pour technology or lean more heavily into RilEntertainment's event-driven lounge model, remains unclear. For now, Downtown Cincinnati's Fountain District is without the self-pour wine bar that helped define its nightlife scene for the better part of two years.
