When you think Walt Disney World, wine isn’t the first, or last thing, that comes to mind. But thanks to Disney Springs, wine lovers or those interested in wine are in for a real treat. Master Sommelier George Miliotes brings his renowned wine expertise to Disney Springs® with Wine Bar George. Wine Bar George is the only Master Sommelier-led wine bar in Florida.
His history with Disney goes back decades. He was part of the opening team of the California Grill restaurant at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. Eventually, he became one of 279 Master Sommeliers in the world by passing a series of rigorous examinations that require a candidate to identify wines by taste, aroma and sight.
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At Wine Bar George, customers can taste any ounce of wine (and more than one) on the list of hundreds at no charge. It’s the only place in the country that offers such. As part of Walt Disney World’s Unwrapping Disney Springs event, PopCulture.com was invited to partake in all things food, beverage, and holiday at Disney Springs. George spoke to PC about his unique tasting program, and why Disney Springs is the best place for his business. Oustide of delicious wines, the food menu is also yummy, offering everything from mac and cheese balls to skirt steak.
So, out of all of the places in the world, especially with your level of experience. Why Disney Springs for this, for this location?
So there’s a little bit of history here. In 1992, my family got out of the restaurant business and I found myself without a job for the first time in my life. I was about 30 years old. I was lucky enough to get an interview out here at Disney. And there was a leader who ended up having trust in my expertise. I wasn’t a master sommelier yet. I was just starting that kind of path.
And so if you’ve been to the California Grill, I did the very first renovation of that from top of the world to California Grill, then ran it from 93 to 2001. And that was how, for lack of a better way to put it, that was where kind of made my name in the business.
So back in 93, when we opened, we did a 100 choice wine list of the California Grill, all by the glass, all from California. It was unheard of at that time. Now, there are other people who do cool things like that. I worked there for eight years. It was a great time.
From there, my chef and I were hired away by Darden Restaurants to do this restaurant called Seasons 52m of which I’m a founder of along with the chef from the California Grill. We did that for 15 more years. But how the corporate wheel kinds of spins is fast, and after 14 years of working at Darden opening up 75 restaurants and running the Capital Grill, Seasons 53, and Eddie V’s beverage programs, I felt like my expiration date was approaching. And at the time, Disney asked me about building a wine bar at the Springs.
I wasn’t looking for another job, but it was clear to me that it might be fun to do something else. I still had a great relationship with Darden and with Seasons 52 and Capital Grill and Eddie V’s. But it was just maybe time for somebody else to take that over and for me to do something cool and special. Opening 75 restaurants in 15 years and being on airplanes all the time is great, and I’d make friends in many places, but there was no stability because I was always on the go.
It’s a sustainability thing. I have 80 families that work out of Wine Bar George. I know all 80 of them, and we work together every single day. Over half the servers are still here from day one. A lot of them came in on day one and knew nothing about wine and knew very little. And now do they need me at a table? No, they don’t because we’ve learned over six years.
When Disney said, ‘Hey, do you want to do this?’ My wife and I came down here and saw all the business here. And we realized that with great opportunity comes great responsibility. And so we wanted to do something that was totally different. I could have put up those little machines that you put your credit card in that start out two ounces and they walked away. But here, I like looking guests in the eye. I like helping educate them. I like them coming back as often as possible. And as I said, I like having a large number of employees where we all work together as a team and have fun. I think that’s why Disney Springs is the best place.
I’ve noticed that there’s been a major shift in people having more interest in wine, wine tasting, and learning about wine versus craft cocktails in recent years. Why do you think that shift has taken place?
So I think alcohol as a bigger part of the business has been really for the last 25 years, maybe even a little bit longer, about producing less but producing better. And when you go into that mode, there’s all these things that are really, really delicious out there. And always pushing to improve. I think that people want to learn more and more and more and more about it.
And so the advent of wine bars is really as much a reaction to people wanting to know more about wine. And not just Cabernet, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, but everything. And when you put things like this on TikTok or Instagram or whatever the funnel is, it’s much cooler if it’s new and different than if it’s, ‘Oh I had this Chardonnay that my mom drank.’
There’s nothing wrong with the chardonnay your mom drank. But it is cooler to say, ‘Hey, I had this white grape called Timo Roso from Piedmont in Italy that I’ve never really known that it was really that delicious and that good.’ So I just think that as you know, the world becomes more global, there’s all these cool things out there and people are interested in all those cool things.
How do you define a good wine?
So that’s easy: It tastes good. And a lot of times, we get all wrapped up in being able to describe taste and price and brand – and all I care about is it tastes good. I was putting together a tasting that I’m doing at the Dr. Phillips Center here in downtown Orlando in December. And it’s six really, really good wines. But the funniest thing about it is that it’s the least expensive of the six, that’s the best. It’s still a top quality wine.
I love the tasting program that you offer and for you to offer it at no cost is a real treat. Why did you decide to do that? Because you are a businessman and you could make thousands of dollars a night. But people are able to try these things at no cost here.
I want to turn the business proposition on his head. Everybody sees us selling a bottle as the holy grail, like, ‘Oh, if I sell $200 bottle, it’s awesome.’ It is awesome. But if I truly care about people learning about wine, why should you have to charge for the whole bottle? The technology exists to allow people to try things.
You can go into places like Starbucks and try things at free or no charge. Why is the wine business you have to buy? And then I have 44 wines by the glass, none of which you may be interested in. And so I think there is a gap in the market. There is this interest in tasting things. So why don’t we make it more interesting for the guests?
If you come and you look at how we store wines, we have some wines that we use a vacuum system to keep because we sell a bottle a day or a bottle every other day. We have some that we use to not in the same way because they’re expensive and maybe it takes us two weeks to sell the whole bottle. So there’s money to be made in that. I don’t understand why other people aren’t doing it. But it’s great for us. 9:15
What country or town for you has the best line? Or, you can give me your top five.
This question is wrought with danger. I’ve got friends in California. I’ve got friends in Spain. I’ve got friends in South Africa. I’ve got friends in Italy. I’ve got friends in France. I’ve got friends in Germany who all love their wines. I love their food. I love going to those places. So I will give you kind of my very quick and dirty hierarchy of this.
Sonoma Napo is the first place I ever visited. My heart is there because I am an American and that’s where we make wine in the United States and there are other places up and down the coast. But those were the first places that I ever went to. And so it’s hard to say that I don’t love those.
Spain is an area where I have a very close relationship with a guy named Jorge Ordonez, who is the greatest winemaker in Spain and the greatest exporter of Spanish wines. Life is not bad when we go over and we taste and we blend wines and we eat Spanish food if it’s awesome
South Africa, in the early 2000s, I helped break the mold of how business was done in the United States with what we did with the wine bar at Jiko at Animal Kingdom Lodge. We had to go to Michael Eisner, the CEO of Disney at that time to say, ‘Yes or no, we’re going to do this.’ Nowadays, you can find South African wines everywhere. But when we did it, it was a foreign concept. So South Africa has a special place in my heart.
Italy and France are pretty good there too. But that’s like my little hierarchy.
