Pine Bush Just Got a Speakeasy Behind a Bookcase. The Guys Behind It Met on Orange County Choppers.
- Larie Pidgeon
- 1 hour ago
- 8 min read
Pine Bush has a new bar.
That sentence is technically true and wildly undersells what just happened.
The Baldwin is a new speakeasy-style cocktail bar and tasting room inside the former Baldwin Vineyards space, built for people who want more from a night out than a drink and a barstool.
You enter through a hidden bookcase door. Inside are cocktails, rotating food vendors, live original music, a huge outdoor yard and stage, a working Victrola, an old player piano, vintage film gear, handmade copper-and-brass shelving, a glowing SPEAKEASY sign and enough strange objects to make the room feel like somebody’s very cool private clubhouse.
And Mac.
We’ll get to Mac.
The reason to go is not simply that Pine Bush has a new place to drink. It is that Mark Chiancone and Evan Favaro built a room out of the things they already loved — television, motorcycles, fabrication, whiskey, antiques, car culture and music — instead of buying somebody else’s idea of what a speakeasy should look like.
No velvet-rope cosplay. No hospitality catalog pretending to have a personality.
You have to find the damn door.
The Baldwin opened July 18, and the owners are already asking a much more interesting question than whether people will come for cocktails:
How weird will Pine Bush let them get?
“We’ll see what Pine Bush and the Hudson Valley patrons let us get away with being in the middle of a rural area.” — Mark Chiancone
We hope the answer is: a lot.
FIRST CAME THE MOTORCYCLES. THEN CAME THE WHISKEY.
The story starts nowhere near a cocktail bar.
Chiancone and Favaro met in 2013 while working on CMT’s one-season Orange County Choppers series. Favaro was part of the cast and already running Speakeasy Motors, his fabrication shop. Chiancone says he had been working as a sound mixer on the Orange County Choppers/American Chopper productions since 2010 and later added field producing to his work.
That is also when Mac entered the picture.
Chiancone says Newburgh animal control brought Mac and a litter of puppies to the shop before the puppies were taken for adoption.
Mac stayed with him.
So before there was a distillery umbrella, a whiskey brand or a hidden-door bar, there were two guys who met around motorcycles and television and one dog who basically decided, yeah, I work here now.
Six years later, Favaro approached Chiancone about starting a whiskey brand.
Speakeasy Motors Whiskey Co. grew directly out of Favaro’s fabrication world and the motor culture around it. The bottle labels feature vehicles he built. Their flagship rye and maple rye use Favaro’s Model A; another bottle features one of his motorcycles.
The whiskey eventually connected the pair with Liquid Mercantile, which helped them source and curate early barrels and became the umbrella for the distilling business that now operates alongside Speakeasy Motors Whiskey Co. and The Baldwin.
If you are wondering whether The Baldwin, Liquid Mercantile and Speakeasy Motors Whiskey Co. are three businesses or one complicated business family, the owners know.
Chiancone breaks it down simply: Liquid Mercantile is the distillery umbrella. Speakeasy Motors Whiskey Co. is the whiskey brand. The Baldwin is the cocktail bar and speakeasy-style space.
And despite the old Baldwin Winery signage still hanging around the property, there is no winery operating here now.
What replaced it is much stranger.
THE ROOM IS BASICALLY THEIR BRAIN, BUT WITH COCKTAILS
For a while, the larger former tasting room sat across the driveway while Chiancone and Favaro focused on wholesale, farmers markets and events.
Their old tasting room was only about 450 square feet. Eventually both the room and the humans running it had reached their limit.
Then customers started asking when they could hang out with them again.
They missed the cocktails.
They missed the weekly car shows.
They missed the place.
And sometimes the best proof that a small Hudson Valley business has become part of a town is not an award, a press release or a ribbon cutting.
It is people asking:
When are you coming back?
Once Chiancone and Favaro had enough staff to breathe again, the bigger room stopped looking like extra square footage and started looking like the next version of the business.
Their landlords gave them the green light, and they went to work.
Chiancone says The Baldwin now has roughly 3,000 square feet indoors, plus a large outdoor yard and stage.
But the square footage is probably the least interesting thing about it.
Favaro fabricated the giant illuminated SPEAKEASY sign with help from Jesse Farrenkopf of Murmuration Inc. in Newburgh. Favaro also built a custom display case and the copper-and-brass shelving behind a service station. Farrenkopf built the hidden bookcase entrance.
The rest of the room grew out of things the owners had been collecting for years.
Favaro’s favorite is a small Singer children’s sewing machine from the early 1920s.
Chiancone cannot seem to pick just one. There is the Farfisa Pianoorgan, a Bolex 8mm camera and an Arri 16mm film magazine. He describes the Pianoorgan as sounding like “an accordion shoved into a piano format.”
You cannot buy that sentence from a hospitality consultant.
Favaro is a metalworker and fabricator. Chiancone has a film degree and spent years recording sound for television.
So when you look around The Baldwin, a lot of what appears to be décor is not really décor at all.
It is their stuff. Their interests. Their work. Their history.
“One thing that was clear from our original tasting room is that people appreciate production design. Entering a space and being completely surprised by what you find inside helps to create a memorable experience.” — Mark Chiancone
Apparently, some of you are taking the hidden part very seriously.
PINE BUSH, PLEASE STOP BEING AFRAID OF THE SECRET DOOR
This may be our favorite thing Chiancone told us.
People are walking into a speakeasy with a hidden entrance… and then getting nervous about finding the hidden entrance.
“Some people are afraid to find the hidden door entrance. Our foyer has been described as an escape room more than once.” — Mark Chiancone
Even after visitors make it inside, Chiancone says many settle at the bar while the back room and yard get less attention than he expected.
So here is the unofficial Hudson Valley Happenings public-service announcement:
Explore the place.
Nobody built a secret bookcase door so you could sit three feet inside it and stare at your phone.
IT IS ALWAYS MIDNIGHT AT THE BALDWIN
The room is deliberately dim and moody. Chiancone says they like to joke that it is “always midnight at The Baldwin.”
The owners are trying to make the space several things at once: a cocktail room, tasting room, music venue, event space and neighborhood hangout.
There is no permanent kitchen. Local restaurants and food trucks rotate through on weekends while the owners work out the longer-term food program.
Then there is the music.
This may be the most interesting experiment happening here because Chiancone and Favaro are not talking about filling the schedule only with bands everybody already knows. They want people to discover something.
“Six months from now it would be great to see a ton of people in the yard enjoying live original music with some New York state beers and a tasting room full of people enjoying our cocktail program.” — Mark Chiancone
He wants stranger late-night acts too.
And that is where Pine Bush becomes more than the address in this story.
There is something worth cheering for when somebody looks at a rural Hudson Valley town and asks how much culture, music and weirdness it can hold — instead of assuming all the interesting nights belong somewhere else.
Not New York City.
Not Brooklyn.
Pine Bush.
The Hudson Valley is at its best when somebody stops trying to copy somewhere cooler and remembers this place is already full of people capable of making something cool themselves.
AND THEY ARE ALREADY TESTING YOU
On August 21, Mansfield, Ohio band Yellow No. 5 is scheduled to bring 1990s and early-2000s-style pop punk and alternative music to The Baldwin.
Then comes the free Surf & Rockabilly Fest on August 28 and 29. Friday’s lineup includes Tsunami Bots, Underwater Bosses and Northern Tides from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday runs from 3 to 8 p.m. with Fat City Rockers, DJ Pete Pop and Dense Benson. Both days also include a classic car and motorcycle cruise-in.
Donations are encouraged to support live music.
“We understand the difficulty of getting people to pay for music they don't know, so we want to allow them to pay what they think it's worth. We're only going to book bands we think are talented so hopefully this allows people to discover some great new artists.” — Mark Chiancone
That is how scenes start.
A room. A stage. A few musicians. People willing to show up.
And, if you are lucky, the same people coming back next weekend with friends.
THERE IS ALSO, YOU KNOW, AN ACTUAL DISTILLERY BUSINESS HERE
Under the antique cameras and mood lighting, these guys do have jobs.
Chiancone handles spirit production, cocktail development, regulatory and compliance work and most of the granular details of running the distillery and cocktail bar.
Favaro handles off-site events, craft fairs, farmers markets and much of the people-facing work that keeps the brand visible.
Their personalities make the split pretty easy to understand.
“I'm a bit of an introvert and prefer to stay in the background,” Chiancone told HVH.
Favaro, meanwhile, is “a great people person and good at getting people in the door to hang out.”
Chiancone may prefer the background. Do not be surprised if you still find him washing dishes.
There is something reassuring about that.
You can make whiskey. Work in television. Fabricate a giant glowing sign. Open a speakeasy behind a bookcase.
Eventually somebody still has to wash the glasses.
THIS IS NOT EVEN THEIR FINAL FORM
The partners are also planning a future facility on Route 300 in Wallkill/Shawangunk.
Chiancone says the project currently has conditional approval while additional state pieces involving agencies such as the Department of Health and Department of Transportation remain outstanding. The site is still vacant land, and he expects the project to take a couple more years.
So no, do not start packing the moving truck yet.
For now, The Baldwin is where all the earlier versions of this business have finally collided.
The tiny tasting room taught them that people remember character. Farmers markets and events taught them how to build an audience without relying on one address. Fabrication gave the whiskey its visual language. Television gave Chiancone an obsession with atmosphere. Their own collections supplied furniture, cameras, instruments and odd objects.
Pine Bush gave them a room big enough to put it together.
And Mac?
Mac is still here.
The dog who wandered into the story during the Orange County Choppers years has lived long enough to watch two guys go from motorcycles and television to whiskey and a hidden-door bar in an old Hudson Valley winery space.
There is something lovely about that.
Shows end. Businesses change. Buildings change hands. Some ideas fail. Other ideas somehow work.
And if you are lucky, the dog who was there near the beginning is still lying around watching everybody figure out what comes next.
GO BEFORE YOU GO
The Baldwin is currently open Friday from 3 to 10 p.m., Saturday from 1 to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 8 p.m. Reservations are not currently required.
Food varies by weekend, with local restaurants or food trucks handling the food program.
Chiancone says there is parking in front and behind the building, plus an accessible side entrance.
His advice for first-time visitors is simple:
“First time visitors should not be afraid to explore.” — Mark Chiancone
So explore.
Find the hidden door. Walk past the bar. Go into the back room. Find the yard. Look at the cameras. Ask about the weird piano. Hear a band you have never heard before. Maybe stay later than you planned.
The Baldwin makes more sense once you realize the clutter is not decoration.
It is Mark and Evan telling you who they are without handing you a brochure.
And Pine Bush?
This one is yours.
