''They're selling wine in gas stations,'' he says. ``Expensive wine.''
It occurred to wine sales representative Betzaida Perozo last week when she added up the 50 or so wine bars that have opened in the past five years in her territory, Coconut Grove and Coral Gables.
''They're just everywhere now,'' Perozo says.
As the tents go up and the Food Network stars prep for their cameos at the seventh South Beach Wine & Food Festival, which starts Thursday, South Florida is riding a wine wave. It's powered by star-chef restaurants, trendy hotels, wine bars, wine clubs, numerous festivals and massive supermarket wine displays.
The wine explosion is a national trend, but we're drinking it faster than anybody else. Between 1997 and 2006, wine sales grew 49 percent in Broward County and 46 percent in Miami-Dade County, more than twice as fast as in New York or Los Angeles.
Statewide, wine sales soared 55 percent -- pushing Florida into the No. 2 spot behind California, according to the Beverage Information Group.
CHASING THE FRENCH
Nationally, wine consumption is up more than 30 percent in a decade, topping 300 million gallons last year for the first time. The United States has surpassed Italy as the world's No. 2 wine consumer and is poised to overtake the front-running French by 2010, according to the London-based International Wine and Spirits Record.
''Wine used to be elitist,'' says longtime South Florida wine opinion leader Bob Dickinson, recently retired as president and chief executive of Carnival Cruise Lines. ``It's become mainstream.''
And it's whetting the palate of a new generation that is taking up wine at a younger age than its baby-boom parents, who didn't master it until their 40s.
Consider Kurt Holoboff. The Boca Raton firefighter has been gradually switching from beer to wine over the past few years.
''I tend to beer when I'm out with my male friends, but a select group of us have become closet wine drinkers,'' says Holoboff, 32. ``It's a nicer way to do an evening: You go to dinner and have some wine.''
To be sure, the tangible elements of the wine explosion -- the boutiques, tastings, superstores and wine aisles at Publix -- have fed off one another.
But they're converging in a new South Florida, one that has shed the image of Miami Vice for one of Art Basel, and where the Adrienne Arsht (formerly Carnival) Center for the Performing Arts opened in 2006 on the leading edge of what many see as a rapid graduation into cultural maturity.
''South Florida is coming together with the interest in arts, cultural events, culinary talent, wine events,'' says Yvonne Roberts, director of the Cellar Club at The Biltmore hotel in Coral Gables. The club opened in 1995 with 30 members paying $395 a year; today it has 3,000 paying $795.
FESTIVALS AND MORE
Elements of the trend:
• Wine festivals: When the South Beach Wine & Food Festival made its debut in Miami Beach in 2002, it drew 7,000 fans; this year, organizers expect 35,000. A ticket to the Grand Tasting in 2002 cost $75; this year, it's $187.50.
''We increased the [Grand Tasting] price to reduce the crowds,'' says Lee Brian Schrager, who as director of special events for Southern Wine & Spirits of America runs the festival. ``It didn't scare anybody off.''
• Wine shops: ''Everyone's expanding wine sales these days,'' says Bittel, co-owner of Sunset Corners Wine and Spirits. ``Publix, Whole Foods, Gardner's. That didn't exist 10 years ago.''
Publix won't say how much wine it sells. But its greatly expanded wine displays feature $252.99 bottles of Louis Roederer Crystal Champagne as well as $4.09 bottles of Sutter Home White Merlot. And it is publishing a quarterly Publix Wine Guide in print and an ambitious online wine guide called Wine 101.
Major national wine retailers are flooding South Florida. WineStyles, based in Margate, opened its first store in Fort Lauderdale in 2004. It has since sold 186 franchises across the country for new shops; 136 are open. It has shops in Coral Springs, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, Wellington and Palm Beach and plans 25 in Miami-Dade, says CEO Bob Florio.
''The demographics in South Florida are right,'' Florio says. ``It's very diverse, with many ethnic groups just learning about wine. There's a pretty affluent population, too.''
WineStyles shops are aimed at novices, limiting selections to 150 wines, most under $25, grouping them not by grape variety or country but in such flavor categories as ''crisp'' and ``silky.''
Total Wine & More, which opened its first Southeast Florida shop in Fort Lauderdale in 2006, now has stores in Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, North Miami Beach and Palm Beach. Kendall, Coral Gables, Pinecrest and Pembroke Pines are next, says David Trone, president and co-founder.
The beverage chain founded in Orlando in 1936 as ABC Liquors changed its name to ABC Fine Wine & Spirits in 1995, opening the first store with the new theme in Coral Springs that year, says marketing director Bob Gibson. Today it has 150 shops throughout Florida, including six in Miami-Dade and Broward, and plans three more here within months.
Gibson credits the boom to the coming-of-age of the baby boomers. Industry experts agree that wine sales have increased as 77 million baby boomers pass through the prime wine-buying ages of 45 to 64.
''We found our customers becoming more sophisticated,'' Gibson says. ``Fine wine was up; beer and liquor were down. There's not a lot of mystery in a bottle of Jack Daniels.''
Gibson says most of his customers are women. ``They've become very sophisticated in terms of food and wine pairings.''
Focus groups told the Wine Market Council that men and women buy wine in different ways. Men might come into a shop armed with the 100-point ratings of influential wine author Robert Parker and buy ''power wines'' for their cellars. Women are more likely to ask for guidance from wine-shop employees, and buy wine for a specific dinner.
''That sounds right,'' says Laura De Pasquale, vice president for fine wine for Palm Bay International importers. ``Men won't ask for directions when they're driving. Why would they ask advice about wine?''
• Wine bars: Bittel's recollection is that 20 years ago, Vines, in The Falls shopping center, was Miami-Dade's lone wine bar. Nobody keeps track of how many there are today, but new ones are opening all around. They seem to occupy every corner on South Florida's social streets -- Las Olas in Fort Lauderdale, off Lincoln Road in South Beach, Main Highway in Coconut Grove, Giralda in Coral Gables.
One popular bar is The Grape, at the Village of Merrick Park in Coral Gables. Avid customers include Donanne Ramos, 36, a furniture-store designer, and Jenny Ballman, 32, an investment advisor. They are sipping $13 glasses of Frei Brothers' 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon and picking at a plate of chicken quesadillas.
In a typical wine-bar encounter, on their arrival they were offered a small ''splash'' of three different wines and asked to choose which one they preferred in a full glass. Both chose a 2005 Frei Brothers merlot from California.
They said they liked it when asked 10 minutes later. But neither could remember what it was.
''I'm not a really serious fan, but I usually drink wine when I go out,'' Ramos says.
• Wine tastings: Barry Alberts, a Miami wine teacher and consultant who began weekly wine tastings 12 years ago, says that his was the only one back then. Today, there are at least two dozen tastings a week in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
''I get up to 130 people at a tasting,'' says Alberts, who holds his at Christabelle's restaurant on Commodore Plaza in Coconut Grove. ``These focused events raise the level of learning and I'm sure raise wine sales.''
At a recent Thursday night tasting at Hollywood Vine, a Hollywood wine shop, regular attendee Joan Gaslowitz explained wine's appeal: ``Beer is fattening and filling, and wine goes better with the food I eat.''
Holoboff, the Boca Raton firefighter, offers another perspective: ``A wine buzz is different. It's not so harsh. A wine buzz is progressive and sort of creeps up on you comfortably.''
Holoboff is partial to Ruffino Reserve Chianti. But in general, younger wine fans are seen as interested in wine but not very knowledgeable, with little brand loyalty, making them vulnerable to such wine marketing ploys as putting animals on labels.
After Yellow Tail Australian wines hit the market in 2002, with a cute kangaroo on the label, the brand soared to 8.1 million cases in sales by 2004, making it the biggest single wine import to the United States. It set off a trend to friendly ''critter labels'' with pictures of pandas, iguanas, even flying cows.
• Wine courses: Florida International University's School of Hospitality and Tourism Management has offered for-credit wine courses since 1972. When Chip Cassidy, wine buyer for the Crown Wine & Spirits chain and wine professor at FIU, started to teach in 1984, the university had three wine classes totaling 120 students. Today it has seven classes totaling 280.
Last year, Miami Dade College began to host a 12-week, $1,500 professional Wine Certification course by the International Sommelier Guild. It's for students who want to work in wine shops, hotels and restaurants.
• Internet sales: Sale of wine over the Internet, a new phenomenon, is sparking growth. In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ban on out-of-state wineries shipping wine to individuals' homes in Florida and other states, saying that interstate-commerce laws prohibit favoring in-state businesses. As a result, the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation reports that more than 350 California wineries a month are applying for the forms required for such shipments to Florida.
RECESSION-PROOF?
Wine sellers around South Florida routinely say they had double-digit annual sales growth over most of the past decade -- with the possible exception of last year, with its real-estate bust. For that year, they give mixed reports.
Alberts, the wine consultant, says many of his wholesale and retail clients told him that the last quarter of 2007 was slow. ''People are trading down, buying three bottles of $20 wine rather than one bottle of $60 wine,'' he says.
But Bittel says Sunset Corners had double-digit growth in nearly every year of the past decade, including 2007.
At Total Wine & More, Trone says sales were up 6 percent nationwide last year, and 18 percent in Southeast Florida.
`A STAPLE'
''Wine's a staple, like food,'' he says. ``People might put off building that larger kitchen, but they won't stop buying food and beverages.''
At the Wine Watch wine shop in Fort Lauderdale, Andrew Lampasone says the economic slump has increased one type of his sales.
He says he is storing 2,000 cases of wine purchased as investments by customers who have pulled some of their money out of the volatile stock market. He keeps the wine for them in a cooled warehouse capable of withstanding a Category 5 hurricane, with plenty of insurance in case power failures interrupt the air conditioning.
''If you compare the blue-chip wines like Chateau Latour or Mouton Rothschild to the blue-chip stocks, you'll see that over time, wine does better,'' he says.
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