How a Philly winemaker is trying to impress Gordon Ramsay and Lisa Vanderpump

To Nicholas Ducos, a partner in Fishtown’s Mural City Cellars, his current stint on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars is “a once-in-a-lifetime experience to give Philadelphia and the urban wine scene that’s happening here a national platform.”

Ducos flew to London earlier this year to compete in the entrepreneur-based challenges on the Fox series, hosted by Lisa Vanderpump and Gordon Ramsay with a Shark Tank-type approach.

There’s $250,000 at stake, and Ducos said that would come in handy as he and partner Francesca Galarus recently dropped a bundle renovating an auto-body garage into a permanent home at Frankford Avenue and Berks Streets on the Fishtown-Kensington border. Mural City, which started in a garage in 2020, offers 13 of its wines by the glass plus beers and guest wines from fellow Pennsylvania makers.

“We’re just trying to give people in Fishtown more places to go hang out that actually have a sense of soul and a sense of community and aren’t just like a big company coming in and just trying to cash in,” Ducos said.

The show is one step toward “helping us grow our business to be the household name of wine in Philadelphia,” Ducos said. “We definitely want to make sure that we can continue to build and grow our location and make wine more accessible for others in the neighborhood.”

Ducos said a casting agent approached the food entrepreneurs group he and Galarus are part of. “Francesca thought it would be a good opportunity to kind of throw spaghetti at the wall and see if we have the next big thing in food and drink,” he said. They made the video audition on the day that it was due. “Two days later, we received a call to do another and then it just snowballed from there,” he said.

Mural City is hosting Wednesday-night watch parties keyed to the show’s 9 p.m. start.