Entering the spacious foyer of John Hunt’s splendid Upper East Side townhouse, it’s hard to know where to look first. To the right is a richly patterned, tapestrylike painting by Sol LeWitt, and to the left, a large photograph of a tree by Rodney Graham — the image inverted, as seen through the lens of a camera obscura. Gilded, graceful 19th-century Venetian lanterns hang from the high ceiling.

Funny, but this doesn’t look like the portal to what may be Manhattan’s only winery.

Yet Mr. Hunt oversees Oriel, his thriving 3-year-old wine company with an unusual business model, from an office in this house, designed by Stanford White. Oriel hires top winemakers in nine countries to make wines true to their regions. While the front label of each wine says “Oriel,” the rear label carries the winemaker’s signature, along with the global coordinates of the region. The 32 wines currently offered range from an earthy French Côtes du Rhône ($14) to Sygnet, a powerhouse Australian shiraz ($100). A New Zealand sauvignon blanc and an Italian prosecco are on their way. In the hurly-burly of New York wine commerce, where newcomers claw for attention, Oriel has scored surprising coups: Soho Wine & Spirits, for example, carries almost the entire Oriel lineup, while the wine list of Sotheby’s Café is exclusively Oriel. The brand has even claimed space on such rarified restaurant wine lists as those of Alto, Cru, and Hearth. In all, Oriel wines are offered at 40 Manhattan wine shops and as many restaurants.

At 43, the Irish-born and English-raised Mr. Hunt is already the veteran of three successful startups: a chain of 85 British coffee shops called Seattle Coffee, that was bought by Starbucks, and two Internet technology firms. Mr. Hunt moved to New York with his wife and four young children in 2003, after stints in London and San Francisco. “I love New York for the density of its self-sustaining neighborhoods, for its sense of angst and humor, and because the seasons are so pronounced. I can kick the leaves in autumn and see cherry blossoms in spring,” he said. Sounds as if the Upper East Side will have its winery for a long time.

Q: Wine lovers value individuality. Why, then, buy a branded wine, as if it were toothpaste?

A: You’re presupposing a brand is a bad thing. Lafite and Mouton Rothschild are two of the most powerful brand names on the planet. They are models of one brand in one place. But there are also superb regional wine brands like Paul Draper’s Ridge, which first made wines in Santa Cruz, then branched out to other parts of California, or Guigal, in the Rhone Valley, which makes wines from different grapes, different villages, at different price points. So long as the name is Guigal, I trust it. Oriel chooses to be a global Guigal. We want to say to people, “If it’s an Oriel wine, it will not only be a terrific bottle — it will express a profound sense of place, no matter where that place is.

Q: What gave you the idea for starting Oriel?

A: It started with personal pain. Because I love wine, I was often trying wines I’d never heard of. Too many of those wines were disappointing. I had great knowledge of certain areas, like Bordeaux and Priorat, but almost none of places like Argentina or Austria. That’s where I got into trouble, and I thought: There’s got to be a better way.

Q: You depend on a global network of top-end winemakers to provide your wines. Isn’t that complicated?

A: That’s the easy part. Winemakers are like architects — they’re creative guns for hire. The best ones have access to great fruit, and they know how to manage it. They make the wine. We supply the labels. If you go to Gagosian Gallery, you see that he’s assembled some of the world’s great artists under one roof. Oriel tries to be that roof for winemakers.

Q: Only a few hundred cases are made of some of your wines, like the Sauternes called Ondine. Does that make economic sense?

A: As in cooking, if you get great ingredients and manage the process carefully, you’ll get great results in winemaking. The problem is that it doesn’t scale. I can cook a reasonable meal for 10 people, but not for a thousand. The same is true with wine, not least because the mark of a great wine is its sense of place. It has to feel like it comes from one patch of dirt. I realized that if we could make small batches of many fine wines under one shared overhead, we could bring down the prices.

Q: When did you get interested in wine?

A: As a boy, I liked making things — tree forts, bicycles, even beer. But the hops cost money, and so I switched to making wine from elderberries and oak leaves, which I could collect for free.

Q: Surely, elderberry wine didn’t give you a taste for great wine.

A: That epiphany came when I was 22, working for a ballooning company in Burgundy. Tasting fine burgundy for the first time, I was stunned to realize the difference that the angle of the slope, the elevation of the vineyard, the hand of the winemaker could have.

Q: You’re new to the wine business. How do you find the state of its health?

A: It’s a totally broken industry, especially in this country. You have 60,000 labels on the shelves, all but a hundred of which few customers have never heard of. It’s almost as if the system is intended to confuse, obfuscate, intimidate. Oriel is meant to be a small blow for consumer clarity.

SOME RECOMMENDED ORIEL WINES “Barona” Albarino 2004, Rias Baixas ($19 at Zachys) Comes on with full-bodied peachy fruit, then a snap of salinity, befitting a coastal wine.

“Dylan” Chardonnay, Russian River Valley ($20 at Zachys) Zingy, citrus-inflected, cool-climate fruit keeps this chardonnay light on its feet, yet richly textured.

“Jocunda” Gigondas 2003 ($35 at Zachys) Spicy and refined, with a long, raspberry-tinged finish: the elegant face of this underrated Rhone appellation.