ABOUT US

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Food was my first love. I spent most of the eighties working in restaurants, front and back of house, and learned pretty quickly that 90-hour weeks on my feet in 180°F kitchens was not a plan for a long career. After helping open the first wine bar in Orlando, and then another in Tampa, I pivoted into the wine business instead.

Through the 1990s I worked as a regional marketing and sales manager for wineries — building brands like R.H. Phillips, Hogue Cellars, Seghesio, and Rosemount Estates, before taking on a large European portfolio for Remy Amerique. I closed out the decade running sixteen states and 26 wholesalers for Seghesio out of Healdsburg-Sonoma. After ten years of 140 flight segments and 240 nights away from home a year, I was ready for a little more stability. Though honestly, I still think like a supplier at heart.

A month before the millennium turned over, I moved into retail wine, putting everything I’d learned on the road — selling to retailers and restaurants across the country — to work behind the counter instead. I spent the next twenty years there, almost to the day, before walking away at the end of 2019.

These days I’m closing in on 40 years in wine, and that education — tasting rooms, wholesaler warehouses, restaurant floors, retail counters, producer visits across Europe and beyond — is what fuels this site. Bon Vivant Savant is where I get to follow food and wine wherever they lead: the regions, the producers, the meals worth planning a trip around. I’m not slowing down, and neither is the list of places still worth going.

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Travel has always been my way of life. Growing up as a military brat, moving every three or four years was just “normal” — new schools, new towns, new ways of doing things, over and over. I never grew out of it. As an adult I kept that pattern going, relocating both around the United States and abroad, always chasing the next place rather than settling into one.

That restlessness turned into a career in hospitality. I’ve opened theme parks, directed logistics for conferences, and coordinated wine tours — jobs that all came down to the same skill: creating magical moments seamlessly. My wine education started as a distributor rep for a new importer in the Orlando area, learning the business one account at a time.

Later, I stepped into a bigger role as a project manager for Rioja Wines North America, handling trade show logistics and building detailed travel itineraries for VIP officials and guests — a job that let me combine my love of wine with my love of moving people through the world well.

Europe feels like home to me, more than anywhere in the Americas. I love wandering crooked streets with no real destination, ducking into a cafe or wine bar tucked away where only the locals go, and letting an afternoon unfold on its own. I’m always up for something new — a new dish, a new region, a new backstreet nobody put in the guidebook. I share Tom’s love of food and wine, but I’m just as happy slowing down with a gelato and people-watching in a plaza, or wandering off to photograph storks nesting on rooftops somewhere in Spain. For me, travel isn’t just the big landmarks — it’s all the small, unplanned moments in between.

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