- December 24, 2024
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Flagler Beach’s newest one-stop wine shop, Tony’s Wine Cabana, has one goal: to demystify wine.
“I became a certified sommelier in 1999 and I swore that if a kid from the Bronx can learn about wine, anybody can learn about wine," Owner Tony Porcellini said.
Porcellini, 58, is a second degree sommelier, or wine expert. He has worked in the food and beverage industry for decades, from helping open the Walt Disney World Swan Dolphin Resort where he trained over 70 certified sommeliers until 2018 to his current position at the Hammock Beach Resort Golf Resort & Spa, where he will retire at the end of 2024.
Porcellini said he opened Tony's Wine Cabana with the goal of making learning about wine more approachable for the average person.
"It's been some of the best six weeks of my life," he said. "It's fun and that's what we wanted it to be."
Tony’s Wine Cabana opened in September at 705 B N. Ocean Shore Blvd., directly across the ocean. Since opening day, Porcellini said, he and his family have had the opportunity to meet many incredible people. Porcellini has been a sommelier for much of his career but he said he enjoyed teaching about wine and did not want to make being just a sommelier his entire career.
The shop serves a variety of wine needs, Porcellini said. Customers can come in to buy a few bottles of their favorite chardonnay at retail price, take a wine tasting class, enjoy a glass of wine or sit down to a meal of their favorite bottle and a curated charcuterie board.
"We want to be your one-stop, wine shop," he said. "And if it deals with wine, we want you to think, 'Tony's Cabana.'"
They've already had one sold out wine class since opening, he said, with another scheduled for the end of October. The plan, Porcellini said, is to offer a wine tasting class every other Thursday.
Wine is his passion, he said.
"Two of the most important things in my life are my family and what I love to do — and that's everything about wine," Porcellini said. With Tony's Wine Cabana he gets to focus on both.
He and his family — his wife, two daughters and their husbands — run the shop, each splitting their time from their day jobs to run the Cabana. His daughter Angela Baldwin, a mental health counselor by trade, splits her week between her private practice and running the shop with her father.
Baldwin said it's a great experience for her to be able to work in both of her fields of interest and work alongside her family. She helped design the Cabana's charcuterie menu and inherited her father's passion for wine.
"We love for people to come in here, find something different to try, find something new that they love or even find the same thing that they already know that they love and pair it with a great [charcuterie] board," she said.
