On grower Champagne.

A grower Champagne producer (Recoltant Manipulant, marked RM on the label) grows the grapes and makes the wine. A house (Negociant Manipulant, NM) buys grapes from growers and blends them. The distinction matters.

I carry four grower producers: Guy Charlemagne in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Champagne Clandestin in the Cote des Bar, R.H. Coutier in Ambonnay, and Champagne Helene in the Cote des Blancs. I carry zero houses.

This is not ideology. It is economics and taste.

Grower Champagne has a sense of place that house Champagne, by design, does not. Krug, Bollinger, Dom Perignon are blended to taste the same every year. That consistency is a virtue if consistency is what you want. My clients do not want consistency. They want a wine that tastes like the place it was grown and the year it was harvested.

Guy Charlemagne's Mesnillesime tastes like chalk. Coutier's Henri III tastes like Ambonnay Pinot Noir. Clandestin's Les Revers tastes like Kimmeridgian clay in the Aube. These wines could not come from anywhere else.

The economics are straightforward. Grower Champagne costs me 40 to 60 percent less per bottle than equivalent-quality house Champagne. The landed cost in Florida is still significant, but the margin for my restaurant clients is materially better. A glass of Coutier Brut Tradition at $22 delivers a better margin than a glass of Moet at $18.

I do not carry houses because I cannot compete on volume with national distributors, and I do not need to. What I can offer is a grower Champagne program that no other importer in Florida has built.