If you're going to ride some snow, mud, etc, I'd have to agree with what the og replier said about buying a bike with a belt. Belt drives are a lot less maintenence, sure, they don't make as much speed as chains... but top speed is irrelevant here. The new belt mechanisms use carbon belts now. Marin has a Fairfax model that comes with a belt and is a really good city bike. It is like $500-700 as well. Definitely consider.

Though if you want to up the ante a bit, you could get one of the BMC's with flat bar. Alpenchallenge are the name of the series, they look kinda nice in red. Closer to $1.1-5k than $500 though.