Two years ago, right after Cork & Olive set up shop in Tampa, I went to check out the place. My reaction was a combination of admiration and nausea: great service (they'll open anything in the store for you to taste!) but the wines – mostly unknown private labels from other countries – sucked. (Read the column). After the story broke, the C&O folks hated me, openly criticizing me to anyone who would listen. But I shrugged it off, figuring the public would discover the wine crappiness for themselves. Apparently, they did: Cork and Olive declared bankruptcy in June.
But a couple of months ago, the fashionable and energetic Frank Henselmann and his team of investors plucked the ailing company from the flames. Believing the concept could yield big returns with a few tweaks, they emerged Cork & Olive from bankruptcy in October.
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2009.