フロリダは高級ワインにとって最大の関心を集める新たな市場である

Florida is the new market of maximum interest for premium wine, a state nicknamed “Sunshine” that went through the pandemic with smart decisions and has prospered ever since. Given the high standard of living, Sarah Phillips says there is a need for premium wine supply in Florida. See details.

Time to read the article: 6m 30s

 

In February 2022, the Financial Times declared Miami “the most important city in America”. It was only half a joke. As most states in America closed their doors during the Covid pandemic, Florida opened them wide to all sun-loving people fed up with restrictions. Their restaurants and hotels were opened at the beginning of summer 2020, thus turning the state into a real magnet.

The mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, hastened to capitalize on the situation, promoting the city as America’s next technological hub. “How can I help?” he asked on Twitter when the founders were discussing the migration to the Sunshine State. At one point, he sponsored a billboard in San Francisco. He posted a tweet: “Thinking about moving to Miami? Contact me.”.

 

And they did it. Since July 2020, over 220,000 people have moved to Florida. From 2021 to 2022, Florida gained 417,000 new residents, making it the fastest growing state in the country. At the time, the most visible subsection of migrants were technology workers. Less known from an affective point of view as “technology brothers”, transformed due to restrictions into remote workers (remote workers) took advantage of the ability to work from home, standing in the sun in Florida.

 

Wine sales are still in full expansion

And as the city expanded a lot, new business opportunities appeared. In April 2022, the French Matthieu Yamoum arrived in Florida, after working for 11 years in the hospitality industry in New York, culminating in the role of wine director at the famous Baccarat Hotel.

“Miami caught fire during the pandemic and we were stuck in New York and New Jersey,” he said. In December 2022, together with his business partner Philippe Vasilescu, he opened Maison Mura, a 232 square meter luxury wine and spirits store in downtown Miami. It was a stunning success.

 

Patrick Cassidy says sales are up in 2020. He is executive vice president and general manager in Florida for Southern Glazer’s, the world’s largest wine and spirits distributor, which is headquartered in Miami, and said things were similar and in 2021. “The hotels were open, the pool services were open. We have benefited greatly as other markets have adopted a stricter approach to Covid protocols.” Patrick said. The year 2022, he says, was static, but the tide returned in 2023.

 

Restaurants continue to open. Many newcomers are from New York, but people have also arrived from the West Coast and even from Great Britain. Major Food Group opened a branch of Italian Carbone in Miami in January 2021. It now has seven points of sale in the city. Gordon Ramsay had a more recent launch, launching Hells Kitchen in downtown Miami in September 2023 and Lucky Cat on Miami Beach earlier this month. Local groups, such as Groot Hospitality, are also multiplying, well ahead. When Casadonna, their joint venture with New York’s Tao Group, opened its doors in October, none other than David and Victoria Beckham were spotted there. All these business expansions have been a huge advantage for wine sellers of the last generation. This doesn’t mean that Florida wasn’t a wine town before, but the market for fine wines has exploded in sales since the pandemic.

Last August, in 2023, the first Wine Talks Miami event for the local wine trade was launched. A benchmark in the industry, talking about the past, present and future of Miami wine, was Allegra Angelo from Vinya Wine, a restaurant and retail concept with two points of sale in the city. Angelo was a key figure in the Miami wine world long before the pandemic. She pointed to Jacqueline Pirolo of Macchialina Restaurant, Amanda Fraga of Genuine Hospitality Group and Zach Gossard, formerly of Faena Miami Beach and Thomas Keller’s Surf Club, as pioneers in the development of Florida’s wine scene.

 

Given the conjuncture of the growth of the wine market, in Florida there is a need to refine wine tastes

The demand for wine education has also increased, according to Alessandra Esteves, co-founder, together with her husband, Guilherme de Macedo, of the Florida Wine Academy. The school, founded in 2016, offers courses from WSET and The Wine Scholar Guild, as well as other events and conferences such as “Champagne Week in Miami” and the VinoSummit wine conference. “We usually have classes for four people,” she said. “Now we have 20-24 participants in our WSET courses and the demand is getting higher and higher. Students must register in time, otherwise they will not get free places.”

 

This evolution did not go unnoticed by wine producers. “Every supplier we would like to come to Miami,” says Erin Jolley MW, portfolio manager for Florida-based Maverick Beverage Company, an independent wine and spirits distributor.

Each of Florida’s wine consumer markets has its own personality and buying preferences. “In Orlando, you need big name brands and a lot of variety to be successful. In the Panhandle it’s the same as Orlando, only it has to be expensive,” says Jolley, a household name in the wine industry. there. “In Naples, there are Italian wines of the latest generation, and St. Pete is interestingly becoming the center of Florida wine.” Overall, there are opportunities for wine trade and consumption throughout the state of Florida,” she says.

 

Producers hoping to enter or grow in the Florida wine market also face a distribution challenge. It is known that the three main distributors, Southern Glazer’s, RNDC and Breakthru Beverage, dominate the wholesale. There are no official figures available, but some estimates place their combined market share at 80-90% of the Florida liquor market. As a result, drink lists in chain pubs and restaurants are often dominated by the big three, as are wine sections in grocery stores.

There are also a multitude of independent distributors. They are particularly well positioned to serve specialist and boutique wine producers and importers, some of whom complain that they feel lost in some of the very large distributor portfolios. The fine wine divisions of the three market leaders, such as Domaine & Estates (Southern Glazer’s) were developed to compete in this space.

 

As Florida is the new market for premium wine, Jolley has advice for producers hoping to succeed in Florida. “First, choose a market segment and focus on it. Then think about establishing your buyers from afar, for example through social networks and a clear and up-to-date website. Connect with people before selling them, so that when you reach them with your offers, they know you and the sale is half done,” she says.

 

Given this remarkably extensive scene of Florida and the hip hop dance of the wine market there, from the most usual consumer to the most demanding, we can hardly even imagine the growth adjacent to the wine industry. There is talk of huge growth rates for the mass media, both on social networks and audio-visual, real estate growth for the opening of restaurants/bars and pubs, the growth of the car industry for supply and deliveries and so on, a linked chain of prosperity, created and put into operation by wine!