Why Florida.

People ask why I chose Florida. The real question is why I did not choose New York.

New York has importers. It has sommeliers who know importers. It has a pipeline from Burgundy to Brooklyn that has been running since the 1980s. Florida has restaurants that open and close with the season, hotel beverage programs run by people who were hired last month, and a climate that destroys wine in transit if you are not careful.

I chose Florida because the gap was obvious. The restaurants were buying from national distributors. The wine lists were safe: big Napa Cabernet, Whispering Angel, Sancerre from houses that ship a million bottles. Nobody was offering allocations from grower producers. Nobody was driving to Barolo and coming back with twelve bottles of Rinaldi.

The logistics are real. Miami to Palm City is ninety minutes in traffic. The humidity requires temperature-controlled storage twelve months a year. Freight from Europe lands at the Port of Miami, which is efficient, but the last mile is expensive.

I started with four producers in 2015. I now carry seventy-three. The math worked because Florida has money and Florida has restaurants that want to be serious about wine but do not have the relationships to source it directly. I am the relationship.