Watch out wine world, here comes...Florida?
With the Florida Swing in progress, this article in a prominent wine industry newsletter caught my eye: Florida Is the Hot New Market for Premium Wine.
According to Meininger’s International, it seems that Miami's growth as an international cultural mecca led to a reasonably well-developed market for fine wine there, but the rest of the State exploded more recently due to Florida's lax regulation of COVID. Wine people appear to have flooded in because, to paraphrase Willie Sutton, that's where the Moet is. In other words, the massive influx of rich people and "tech bros" relocating to Florida during the past few years created a vacuum for good wine that needed to be filled. Want to consult an expert? By their count, you can find three Masters of Wine and eleven Master Sommerliers splashing it out across the State. And you can’t beat this for an “end of civilization as we know it” quote, referring to the action in Miami:
“It’s not $3k of Tequila on a club table, it’s $25k of White Burgundy and stone crabs on a yacht on a Sunday afternoon. This craze of fine wine and rare products is only getting stronger.”
While this sounds more like Scarface than Sassicaia to me, the claim is there’s wine worth drinking in every major city, and even somehow the Panhandle. I found the most interesting part to be the so-called "wine personality" of each area, as quoted below:
Miami: "fun means, first growths, Burgundy and vintage champagne"
Orlando: "name brand cabernet sauvignon or chardonnay"
Panhandle: same as Orlando..."except it needs to be expensive"
Naples: "high end Italian"
St. Pete's: "becoming the natural wine hub" (?)
Clearly, any attempt to characterize a wealthy, rapidly growing state in a few paragraphs is going to miss a lot of local color, as anyone who has read the SwigCoach guides to the Florida Swing markets can attest (check out On Tour if you haven't already). Here are a few of the long-standing beacons of Florida wine excellence the article might have mentioned with more space or time, organized by the nearest PGA Tour stop, and not in chronological order:
Valspar (Tampa):
B-21 Fine Wines and Spirits
Bern's Steak House
Mazzaro's Italian Market
Cognizant (Palm Beach)
La Sirena
Flagler Steakhouse
Virginia Phillip Wine
The Player's (Ponte Vedra)
Nineteen (restaurant at TPC Sawgrass)
Arnold Palmer (Orlando)
The Dining Room at Victoria and Albert (by reputation only-no online list so unverified)
Grant Thornton (Naples)
Bleu Provence
Bottom line, while much of the State remains under the sway of a few giant distributors and nondescript branded wines, you can't go wrong with any of the above. For more options, read the individual market analysis you can find here in On Tour.
