page_title: Pat Kuleto
section_title: Other projects
hierarchical_section_title: Pat Kuleto / Projects / Other projects
caption_attribution_description: At Nick's Cove []If I Ran the Zoo
context_page_description: Pat Kuleto is an American designer, restaurant impresario, builder, innkeeper, and winemaker, credited with being the first American to bring recognition to restaurant design as a distinct form of interior design. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Kuleto had designed nearly 400 restaurants as of late 2009, including some of the most popular fine dining restaurants in the United States.
context_section_description: After making wine for 25 years, Kuleto established the Kuleto Estate Family Winery on an 800-acre (3.2 km²) property in Napa Valley.  He purchased the estate in 1992 as a replacement for his old home, which had burned down, and spent the next five years building a 6,000-square-foot (560 m²) home there, which he called Villa Cucina.  Although he began growing grapes on the ranch in 1993, and made his own wine, he had not opened up a commercial winery.  Construction of the new winery began in 1999 and ended in 2003.  As of 2005 the winery was producing 7,500 cases per year of wine, which it sold in the range of $20 to $50 per bottle, from 91 acres (370,000 m²) of grapes.  Kuleto served as owner, builder, designer, and co-winemaker.  He also raises livestock and farms fish, produce and olives on the property, most of which are processed for private events held on the property.  In 2009 Kuleto sold a controlling interest in the wine business (but only a small portion of the grounds and vineyards) to a small wine conglomerate run by financier William P. Foley, who planned to increase production to more than 14,000 cases per year.
  In 2000 Kuleto bought the Nick's Cove & Cottages, in the isolated unincorporated town of Nick's Cove, between Marshall, California and Tomales, California along the beach at Tomales Bay in Marin County north of San Francisco.  He restored the property to a rustic 1930s appearance at a cost of $14 million, then reopened it in 2007 as an inn of twelve cabins and 130-seat restaurant.  The 8-year project involved environmental mitigation (the restaurant's kitchen is above a stream bed; the California red-legged frog, an endangered species, was discovered on the property during construction), restoration of dilapidated building, and a fishing pier.
  Nick's Cove re-opened just as the Great Recession was beginning. Saddled with the burden of $13 million in debt during a time of economic insecurity, the venture was unable to become profitable. In a letter to investors, Kuleto said that the venture had been a "complete disaster," with the result being a "complete loss of your financial investment." Kuleto's own losses were $5 million.
  The business was sold to Prescott Ashe of Golden Gate Capital in 2011, and is still in operation.
caption: In the dining room at Nick's Cove, in Tomales Bay, California
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